
Class 13) V aZ)(oG 
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C.OEXRIGKT DEPOSIT. 



"UNFINISHED TASKS" 



OF THE 



SOUTHERN PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 



HOMER McMILLAN, Secretary 
The Executive Committee of Home Missions 



Presbyterian Committee of Publication 
Richmond, Va. 



.ft Ms 



Copyright, 1922, 

By 

Presbyterian Committee of Publication 

Richmond, Va. 



Printed in United States of America 

©CI.A677756 



To the Church's Faithful Home Missionaries 

and Their Wives 

who in Lowliness and Obscurity 

are Laboring to Build the Kingdom of God into the 

Life of the Nation 

this Book is Affectionately Dedicated. 



CONTENTS 

Introductory Statement. 6 

I. Home Mission Objectives 9 

II. Laying Foundations 31 

III. Paying a Debt 53 

IV. The Strength of the Hills 87 

V. Our Future Citizens r . . 115 

VI. Our Mexican Neighbors 145 

VII. The Demands of the Task 173 



ENLARGING RESPONSIBILITIES 



8 UNFINISHED TASKS 

all races, classes and conditions. In its various activ- 
ities it represents so many fields, pioneers so many en- 
terprises, lays the foundation of so many possibilities, 
places its hand beneath the burden of so many shoulders 
that in its appeal many voices make their plea. 

It is the purpose of this little volume to tell the story 
of our Home Mission work as it is related to the Assem- 
bly's Executive Committee. It reveals only partially the 
need, the opportunity and the obligation. It attempts 
nothing new or original, but strives to present in a sim- 
ple way some of the tasks that our Church shares with 
other denominations in the common purpose of making 
America Christian. 

This series of studies was prepared in response to the 
earnest request of leaders of missionary education who 
desired a manual covering the Home Mission activities 
of the Assembly's Committee. It is sent forth in the 
hope that it will enlarge the interest and quicken the 
zeal of all true servants of Jesus Christ in their effort for 
the Christianization of America and the evangelization 
of the world, which is the supreme aim of every true 
follower of Jesus Christ. 

homer McMillan. 

Atlanta, Ga., February, 1922. 



CHAPTER I. 
HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 



Population of the United States 105,708,771 

Protestant Church membership 26,205,039 

Roman Catholics, including children 15,721,815 

Under 25 years, not in Sunday school 27,274,210 

Over 10 years, not members of church 50,696,890 

Under 10 years, not members of church. . . 7,413,240 

Total not members of church 58,110,130 

"If you would point to the weakest spot in the 
Protestant Church you would put your finger on the 
army of 27,000,000 children and youth in our land who 
are growing up in spiritual illiteracy, and 16,000,000 
other Protestant American children whose religious 
instruction is limited to a brief half hour once a week, 
often sandwiched in between a delayed preaching ser- 
vice and an American Sunday dinner. Let it be burned 
into the minds of the leaders of the Church that A 
CHURCH WHICH CANNOT SAVE ITS OWN CHIL- 
DREN CAN NEVER SAVE THE WORLD. 

"We are fast drifting into a cultured paganism and 
unless the Church takes important steps to stem the 
present tide of indifference, luxury, and commercial 
greed this country will soon cease to be a Christian 
nation — if, indeed, a country in which three out of 
four of its citizens are without active church relations 
can be said to be a Christian country now." — Dr. W. S. 
Athearn. 



I. 

HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 

Home Missions is the enterprise through which the 
combined force of Protestant Christianity is projected 
on the spiritual destitution of our own land. Its pur- 
pose is to bring all people into the right relation to Jesus 
Christ as Saviour and the acknowledgment of his claim 
to their obedience and service, and bring the redemptive 
power of the gospel to bear upon the life of the nation 
in all its phases. 

The Old Home Missions and the New. In the 
early days of our country the Home Mission task in con- 
trast wuth the present was a very simple undertaking. 
It was largely the work of caring for our own people as 
they moved into new communities that were without 
gospel privileges, and assisting them to support min- 
isters and secure houses of worship. The Home Mis- 
sionary followed the expanding frontier lines as evan- 
gelist, church builder, pastor and teacher. He was the 
pioneer who went forth in the advance of civilization, 
planting the church and the school, and calling the people 
to a higher intelligence and faith in God. His ministry 
had to do largely with a people of a single race and 
tongue. The value of this service to the Church and the 
nation cannot be estimated. In it all the great denomi- 
nations had their beginning. The thousands of churches 
that bless the nation with their conserving and uplifting 
influence and the majority of the educational institu- 
tions are the fruits of this work. Leave the Home Mis- 



12 UNFINISHED TASKS 

sion enterprise out of the past century of our nation's 
history and the terms "dark" and "benighted" which 
are now applied to many other lands might justly be 
applied to our own. 

The new Home Missions is multiplied and complex. 
America is a growing, changing and expanding country. 
Every ten years there is a new America with its peculiar 
problems and perplexities. New frontiers are emerging, 
no longer frontiers of geography, but frontiers of need 
and opportunity. Vast areas of spiritual waste and 
destitution challenge the Church's zeal and consecra- 
tion. The present Home Mission enterprise has to do 
with all the problems of evangelization represented in a 
population of many races, divers tongues and different 
faiths. 

Facts to Face. There are certain outstanding facts 
in connection with America's religious need that must 
be stated and restated again and again if the Church is 
to be brought to a full realization of the magnitude and 
the far-reaching importance of the Home Mission 
undertaking. Never in the history of the Church in 
America has there been a time when there was needed a 
fuller knowledge of the conditions and a more liberal 
support for the task confronting the Christian forces 
in this country than in this day of unparalleled need 
and opportunity for service. 

Our country's religious needs have been presented in 
this striking statement: 

"The United States of America has been invaded 
by three enemy armies which threaten our national 
existence: First, there is within our borders an army of 
five and one-half million illiterates above nine years of 
age; Second, there is an army of more than fifty million 



HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 13 

people above nine years of age who are not identified 
with any church — Jewish, Catholic or Protestant; 
Third, there is an army of twenty-seven million Pro- 
testant children and youth, under twenty-five years of 
age, who are not enrolled in any Sunday school or other 
institution for religious training. 

"If these three armies should form in double column, 
three feet apart, they would reach one and one-fifths 
times around the globe at the equator. If they should 
march in review before the President of the United 
States, moving double column at the rate of twenty- 
five miles a day, it would take the three armies three 
years and five months to pass the President. 

"These three interlocking armies constitute a triple 
alliance which threatens the . life of our democracy. 
Patriotism demands that every loyal American enlist 
for service and wage three great campaigns — a campaign 
of Americanization, a campaign of Adult Evangelism, 
and a campaign for the Spiritual Nurture of Child- 
hood."* 

In the Home Mission program there are four great 
objectives: 

1. The Salvation of the Individual. This is the 
supreme purpose of all mission work. All other results 
wait on this. It was for the salvation of the lost that 
Christ, looking out over the waiting and yearning 
multitudes, said to his disciples, "The harvest truly is 
plenteous but the laborers are few ... go your 
ways." It is for the salvation of the lost that mission- 
aries, exemplifying the spirit of the Master, have gone 
to every land, nation and tribe, enduring hardships, 
privations and pain, that they "might by all means 
save some." 

In the vast and varied Home Mission fields the Church 



*The World Survey. 



14 UNFINISHED TASKS 

is confronted with the greatest missionary opportunity 
that has come to any people since the days of the apostles. 
Of the fifty millions over nine years of age out of church 
in America, twenty-one million are in the bounds of the 
Southern Presbyterian Church. Of the twenty-seven 
million young people out of the Sabbath school, thirteen 
millions are in the Southern States. Of the five and a 
half million illiterates, three million are in the South. 
Is this not a need, vast and appealing? The fact that 
there are many churches and ministers and mission 
workers does not in the least relieve our Church of her 
responsibility, nor rob her of her opportunity for saving 
these millions. The fact that these people live in 
America in no sense makes better their condition. It 
is not a question of residence, but of spiritual destitution. 
The fact is they are our neighbors, and they are not being 
reached for Christ. The gospel must be carried to the 
cities and hamlets and the places where the people are. 
The command is, "Into every city and place." 

2. The Security of Our Country. To the nation 
as to the man, to be without God is to be without hope. 
The moral and spiritual progress of the nation must keep 
pace with its material development. The Church has 
made America what it is, and only an enlargement of 
the Church can make it better. The Church is the 
salt of the earth. Salt is the thing that saves. If 
Sodom had contained a church of ten members that 
great city would have been spared. No one can esti- 
mate the power of the church in the development and 
preservation of American life. The Church has been the 
most important factor in bringing America to its present 
position of influence among the nations. It is the one 



HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 15 

institution that stands for everything that is right and 
is opposed to everything that is wrong. 

There was never greater need for the Church and the 
things for which it stands than at the present time. 
Many dangers are threatening our national security. 
R. H. Edmonds says: 

"It would be folly to shut our eyes to the possibilities 
of evil which surround us. We are too prone, ostrich- 
like, to close our eyes to the dangers about us. We lay 
unto ourselves the flattering unction that America is 
different from other lands and that we shall never have 
to face the dangers which have brought chaos in many 
parts of Europe. We are constantly saying to ourselves, 
'It is impossible that the things which have happened 
in Europe should happen in America.' But that which 
seems impossible often becomes the possible. 

"In the early summer of 1914 it would have seemed 
absolutely impossible that within a few months all of 
Europe would be one vast slaughter house and that 
millions and tens of millions of men would be engaged 
in the greatest death grapple in human history. Even 
then it would have seemed impossible, beyond the dreams 
of the wildest visionary, that two million American sol- 
diers would have to fight on the battlefields of France 
to save civilization from the destructive powers of bar- 
barians and atheists. From the beginning of human 
history the impossible is the thing that has become a 
reality.''* 

The enemy was never more active nor were there ever 
so many forces of evil at work to undermine the founda- 
tions of our national greatness. 

(a) The Bible is Discredited. The Bible is the Magna 
Charta of all free people. It is the foundation on which 



*Manufacturers Record. 



16 UNFINISHED TASKS 

our nation was built, and America will be strong and 
prosperous as the teachings of God's Word are received, 
believed and obeyed. In all our cities and in many 
country places there is an insidious campaign against the 
integrity of the Scriptures. This attack upon the au- 
thority of the Bible began in Germany. It is one of the 
many crimes for which she must answer. In the last 
analysis it is an attack upon the deity of Christ. To 
question God's Book is to question the author. To 
doubt God is to doubt His Son. Christ stood across 
the pathway of German conquest. Thus would Ger- 
man philosophy and German militarism put Christ, 
whose teachings convicted and condemned their evil 
purpose, out of the way. 

Germany is an illustration of the truth that what you 
would put in your nation you must put in your schools. 
For three generations the children and youth of the Ger- 
man Empire were taught a pagan political philosophy, 
void of God, Jesus Christ, the Ten Commandments, 
and the Golden Rule. In 1914 sixty-seven million Ger- 
man people were ready to go forth at the command of 
their Kaiser to conquer the world. The full fruit of 
the seed sown in the schools of that nation is seen in the 
devastations of Belgium and France. The war is over, 
but the teaching that caused the war is not over. To 
quote again from R. H. Edmonds: 

1 'There is spreading over our land the accursed 
atheistic teaching of German philosophy, more powerful 
for evil than were all Germany's armies and navies, and 
if America does not give heed to this menace its downfall 
will be as certain as was Germany's." 

If America is to be a fit place in which to live and is 



HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 17 

to fulfill her divinely-appointed service to the world, the 
Bible principles of truth and righteousness must be 
wrought into the warp and woof of our country's life. 
But Protestant Christianity has looked on with careless 
indifference, while the Catholic and the Jew have joined 
with the infidel and the atheist in the effort to keep the 
Bible out of the public schools. Millions of American 
children, the future leaders of the State and nation, are 
allowed to grow to manhood with no knowledge of God 
or righteousness or a judgment to come. Whoever 
would keep the Bible from the people or weaken their 
faith in its authority is the herald of a decadent civiliza- 
tion, the prophet of national disaster and the forerunner 
of a reign of lawlessness. The nation that banishes 
God's Holy Word has written its own doom. 

(6) The Sabbath is Desecrated. The maintenance of 
the Christian Sabbath lies at the root of all national 
morality and civil liberty. The Sabbath is the only 
safeguard of religion, and religion is the surest stay of the 
State. John Ruskin said that the thirty minutes on 
Sunday when the man of God stands forth to speak to 
ignorant and sinful men are the most important thirty 
minutes known to society and civilization. About 
one hundred and fifty years ago Voltaire prophesied 
that before the close of that century Christianity would 
have disappeared from the face of the earth. He ad- 
vised his followers that if they would destroy Chris- 
tianity they must begin with the Christian Sabbath. 
Christianity and the Sabbath stand or fall together. 

"The rule is, w^here there is no church and no church- 
going there is no Sabbath, and where there is no Sabbath 
and no Sabbath-keeping there is no religion, and where 



18 UNFINISHED TASKS 

there is no religion there is no God, and where there is 
no God there is no conscience, and where there is no 
conscience there is no respect for the rights of men, and 
where there is no respect for the rights of men there 
is no security for life or property. Now take religion, 
God, conscience, respect for the rights of men, and pro- 
tection of life and property out of the American republic, 
and just how much of what is left would be worth 
having?"* 

A reliable authority states that four million people 
in this country are making merchandise on the Lord's 
Day, and that twenty times that number spend the day 
in mere worldly pleasure-seeking. Well may we cry 
out for America, as Pope Pius said concerning France 
in his day: "Lose not a day, not even an hour, nor even 
a moment; go and tell France that if she would be saved 
she must return to the sanctification of the Lord's 
Day." When the Sabbath is gone, honesty is gone, 
justice is gone, and that which has been our nation's 
glory is gone. 

(c) False Faiths Are Active. It is the teaching of his- 
tory that the religion that holds the conscience of a na- 
tion will determine the civilization. The greatness 
and strength of America rests on Christian principles 
and Christian character. Yet it is a fact that countless 
multitudes in our land are under the sway of religious 
conceptions that are openly antagonistic to the Word of 
God and the Christian faith. These religions are all 
kinds and varieties. Some are imported and some are 
the products of our own country — Brahmans, Con- 
fucianists, Buddhists, Mohammedans, Mormons, 
Theosophy, Christian Science, New Thought, Atheism, 



e Dr. David Gregg, "Makers of the American Republic," 



HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 19 

Infidelity, Bolshevism. While members of Christian 
churches have been sitting back with a sense of security 
in their Christianity, the organized forces of evil are 
actively engaged in denying the deity and authority of 
Jesus Christ and attempting to overthrow the Christian 
Church. A writer in the Missionary Review of the 
World describes this campaign for the destruction of 
Christianity: 

" Several infidel organizations in New York City are 
known by various titles that do not indicate their real 
character. Their favorite methods of attack are: 

" First, aggressive outdoor meetings, at Madison 
Square and in all the principal thoroughfares at noon 
and at night whenever the weather permits. At these 
meetings Jesus Christ and the Bible are held up to 
ridicule, and many blasphemies are uttered. 

" Distribution of infidel literature is a second method of 
attack. Books and pamphlets written by Tom Paine, 
Robert G. Ingersoll, Voltaire, and others are widely 
distributed to the young men who make up most of the 
audiences, and who eagerly buy almost anything that 
is offered in that line. A monthly magazine is also pub- 
lished for the purpose of 'educating the public and free- 
ing them from the bondage of religion.' 

"A third form of this Satanic activity is the debate, 
held sometimes at the public squares and sometimes in 
halls. The favorite themes at these meetings are: The 
Resurrection, The Virgin Birth, The Trinity, The Deity 
of Christ, and The Authenticity of the Bible. These 
debates are often carried on by educated and able men, 
who display considerable familiarity with the subjects. 
The enemy of God has able generals. 

1 'Another method employed to spread infidelity is the 
establishment of 'Sunday-schools.' Boys and girls of 
the neighborhood are brought together and are taught 
that the Bible is not true and that Jesus Christ was either 
a mere man or is the mere creation of somebody's dis- 



20 UNFINISHED TASKS 

torted imagination. What harvest must we expect 
from such seed-sowing? 

"This aggressive infidelity and agnosticism are a chal- 
lenge to the Christian Church to proclaim the gospel by 
word and deed to the unchurched and unsaved multi- 
tudes of men, women and children in our cities. " 

Mormonism is an American disgrace and one of the 
most subtle and dangerous of all the enemies of our 
Christian civilization. It has been described as a "wolf 
in sheep's clothing. Calling itself a church, it is in fact 
an absolute monarchy and under the cloak of religion it 
both teaches and practices crime and treason. Pretend- 
ing to be loyal to American institutions, it is in sworn 
disloyalty to our republic." 

The Mormon Church is not yet a century old. It was 
organized in 1830 in New York State with six members, 
and in 1920 had multiplied these by one hundred thou- 
sand. Its missionaries to the number of four thousand 
go about this country visiting at least three million 
homes annually and, according to its own claims, added 
eighty thousand converts in one year, and all from evan- 
gelical churches. Mormonism is literally a "robber of 
churches." The first theft occurred when Joseph Smith, 
its founder, converted four members of his family who 
were members of the Presbyterian Church. From At- 
lanta, the Southeastern headquarters, hordes of mis- 
sionaries go out all over the South, not only men but 
good-looking young ladies as well. Its missionaries 
creep into the Sunday-schools, into church choirs, and 
even into the pulpits of evangelical churches, secretly 
spreading its doctrine in ever-widening circles. Fre- 
quently its women missionaries get into the homes, 
schools and Bible classes. It is time that Christian peo- 



HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 



21 



pie who love the Church and the home were aroused to 
this danger which threatens the very foundations of the 
republic. 

(d) The Growth of the City. The movement of pop- 
ulation cityward is one of the most striking facts in the 
progress of modern civilization. America is rapidly be- 
coming a nation of cities. From town and country 
and beyond the sea there is a resistless stream. Large 
cities are becoming larger. Great cities are becoming 
greater. If the rate of the movement of population 
from country to city which prevailed from 1900 to 1910 
continues until 1940, there will then be in the United 
States twenty-one million more people in our cities 
than outside of them. In the cities are massed the 



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"WHERE CROSS THE CROWDED WAYS OF LIFE" 



22 UNFINISHED TASKS 

forces that rule, the educational, social, political and 
financial powers. If the nation is to be saved the citv 
must be saved. Missionary effort has not increased 
with the population. The cities are relatively un- 
churched. In many of them there are fewer churches 
than there were ten years ago. Population grows faster 
than Protestant membership. It has been pointed out 
that in two score and more of our largest cities the 
Church has grown less than two-thirds as rapidly as the 
population, and the larger the city the fewer are the 
proportionate number of churches. 

"If every church of every kind in New York City were 
crowded to the doors on Sabbath morning, and all the 
people had started to church, there would be three 
million of people on the street who could not secure an 
entrance to a house of worship. 

"If you take all the Protestant population of New York 
City and add to it all the Roman Catholics, the Greeks 
and the Christians of every nation in it, you have less 
than one-third of the entire population. Nearly one- 
third is Hebrew and more than one-third is atheist, 
infidel or nothing at all. There are 100,000 nominal 
Protestants in the city with no church connection what- 
ever. Only about eight per cent of the population are 
members of Protestant churches."* 

In 1910 thirty-three of our largest cities were more, 
foreign than American — if by American we mean 
American-born ancestry. We are told by those who 
claim to know that the American city is the worst gov- 
erned in the world. Vice and sin and crime abound. 
The cry of darkest London that broke the heart of Wil- 
liam Booth is not more pathetic in its appeal than the 

*Stelzle, "American Social and Religious Conditions." 



HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 23 

cry that comes from the submerged millions in our own 
cities. 

"I could tell how Alexander Duff, who certainly 
knew the abysses of vice in vice-ridden India, if any 
observer might be said to know — I could tell how Duff 
came to this fair land in 1854 and, after a visit to the 
slums of Philadelphia, left this testimony on record: 
'Anything worse I have never seen. Such vileness, such 
debasement, such drunkenness, such beastliness, such 
unblushing shamelessness, such glorying in their crimi- 
nality, such God-defying blasphemousness, in short, 
such hellishness, I never saw surpassed in any land, and 
I hope* I never shall. Indeed, out of perdition, it is not 
conceivable how worse could be."* 

If the city is to be saved it must be saved by the 
Church. Legislation will not cleanse. Libraries will 
not redeem. Social programs will not meet the need. 
Only the gospel of Christ can do this. 

(e) Disloyal Propaganda. The following statements 
are taken from an address by Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis 
on "Alienating Americans from America": 

"All patriots now realize that the German spark has 
kindled a world conflagration. The attempted revolu- 
tion in Seattle, the war made by the Bolshevists of 
Centralia, Washington, upon their returned soldiers, 
the organization in Detroit of a normal school for the 
training of Bolshevist orators and organizers, the dis- 
covery of hundreds of Soviets in our great American 
cities, the sudden increase of radical newspapers, the 
seizure of pistols, rifles, bombshells, in various I. W. W. 
headquarters, and the adoption of this watchword by 
the radicals, 'Down with God, government and prop- 
erty,' represent events and forces big w T ith peril. Plainly 

*Dr. J. E. McAfee, "Missions Striking Home." 



24 UNFINISHED TASKS 

an invisible enemy is carrying on a secret battle against 
our institutions. 

"The Department of Justice has warned the American 
people that there are at least 300,000 people in our coun- 
try who hate the republic, and are seeking to overthrow 
its free institutions. 

"The real gravity of the situation is revealed by the 
fact that there is an organized propaganda for the aliena- 
tion of Americans from America. In every industrial 
center of every State the Radicals are engaged in the 
systematic teaching of revolution. Multitudes of young 
soldiers, newly returned from France, have been made 
the subjects of special efforts by Radicals who were 
trying to undermine the patriotism of our young men. 
One event and experience will illustrate many. In 
an oil town in West Virginia a young soldier recently 
returned from France and employed as assistant to an 
oil well expert in West Virginia took advantage of a lull 
in the conversation as to the state of this country, saying, 
'Never again for me! Never again for me! The next 
time the plutocrats can pull their own chestnuts out of 
the fire!' Further questioning developed the fact that 
the head man was a radical Socialist, and a soap-box 
orator, and only incidentally an oil well expert. The 
older man had spent his evenings, for three months, 
filling the mind of the young soldier with his pet theories. 
Slowly he had killed patriotism in that boy's soul. 
One of the latter's friends said that since his return from 
France, and becoming an assistant to the well digger, he 
had become a changed man. Washington thought 
that the white flower of patriotism was the sweetest 
blossom in the garden of the soul, but some influence had 
descended like a black frost upon this flower, and slain 
it forever. 

"In a single high school its principal found that one- 
third of the students in this boys' high school believe 
that the political institutions of our country should be 
overthrown and replaced by an economic Socialist gov- 
ernment in Washington. In the hands of these boys 



HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 25 

were the Soviet catechism, written by a thoroughly 
discredited American correspondent who had spent a 
few weeks in Petrograd and Moscow. 

"Life's critical years are from eight to fifteen. Then 
the child is wax to receive and steel to hold. Melt 
your crimson glass, and while it is hot the chaff and 
straw will stick, but when it cools, no hand can cleanse 
the ruby glass. If these enemies of society succeed in 
drilling their anarchistic principles into our boys and 
girls, the future will be lost before the battle begins." 

(/) Decline in Family Religion. The nation has no 
greater peril than this. If Christian people were loyal 
to their duty as Christians and as citizens, the dangers 
that threaten our national well-being would soon dis- 
appear. But thousands of people brought up in Chris- 
tian homes have forsaken the Church and are living in 
practical neglect of the claims of Christ to their influence 
and service. A life of religious indifference is a blow at 
our best American ideals. Our government was es- 
tablished in the name of God by God-fearing men. The 
sessions of the Continental Convention in Philadelphia 
were, upon motion of Benjamin Franklin, opened with 
religious exercises and prayer to God. If we depart 
from the spirit and practice of our forefathers we do so 
at our own and our country's peril. 

Henry W. Grady was passing the White House in 
Washington with a friend. He said, "That is the home 
of my nation." After spending a few days as a guest 
on a Southern plantation where the Bible was read and 
the family and servants gathered for morning and even- 
ing prayer, he said, "I was mistaken when I said that 
glistening pile of marble in Washington is the home of 
my nation. The home of my nation is that home where 
the Bible is read; where Jesus is loved; and where chil- 



26 UNFINISHED TASKS 

dren are taught to pray." In these days of rush and 
hurry family worship is almost a thing of the past. A 
representative of one of the great denominations states 
that not five per cent of its members have family worship 
in any form, and even the blessing at the table is rapidly 
disappearing. The Chairman of the Assembly's Com- 
mittee on Sabbath and Family Religion estimates that 
not over twelve per cent of the homes in our Church 
have the family altar. This modern and efficient age 
in which we live smiles at the time when "the family 
altar stood as the opening and closing gates of the day." 
But the Wall Street Journal says that what America 
needs is just that. It is not a better banking system 
that will save us, nor a higher tariff, nor better laws; but 
a revival of the old-fashion religion which never thought 
of omitting family worship even in the rush of harvest. 
Few law-breakers come from homes like that. The glory 
of the nation is the character of its homes. The homes 
that make a nation great and strong are the homes where 
the Bible is read and Christ is honored. 

He is not a super-patriot who makes patriotic speeches 
and says fulsome things about the flag. The greatest 
patriot is he who seeks to cast out all the evils and vices 
that injure and weaken and to secure for his country 
everything that is noblest and best. Patriotism and 
Christianity unite in the Home Mission appeal. If the 
Church is to win its battle for the conservation of the 
nation's ideals and morals, it must have the loyal and 
enthusiastic support of every man who calls himself a 
Christian. Religion is the only defense against un- 
godliness and immorality. "Our country for Christ" 
is the only worthy motto of every true Christian. 



HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 27 

i. The Growth of the Denomination. Home 
Missions is the life of the Church. This fact finds 
abundant illustrations in the history of every denomina- 
tion that exists to-day, or that has ceased to be. In pro- 
portion as churches have stressed the work of Home Mis- 
sions have they grown in numbers and increased in 
strength ; as they have neglected the work of expansion 
have their numbers lessened and their resources di- 
minished. When a church ceases to go forward it be- 
gins to go backward. It is either advance or retreat. 
"For unto everyone that hath shall be given and he 
shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall 
be taken away even that which he hath." It is addition 
or subtraction, and this principle is as true in the life of 
the Church as in the life of the individual. 

The present position of power and influence which 
our Church holds among the great religious forces in 
this country has been attained through its Home Mis- 
sion agencies. When the Southern Presbyterian Church 
began its existence as a separate denomination, the con- 
gregations were few in number with not many members. 
As near as can be ascertained the total did not reach 
more than eleven hundred churches, with about seventy 
thousand members. In the regions west of the Missis- 
sippi River there were considerably less than five thousand 
communicants in one hundred and twenty weak and 
scattered congregations. After sixty years of Home 
Mission endeavor the churches east of the Mississippi 
River have multiplied many fold, and west of it through 
the same agency have been developed the great Synods 
of Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, among 
the strongest and most influential in the Assembly, 



28 UNFINISHED TASKS 

having more members than there were in the whole 
Church sixty years ago. 

A careful study of the records reveals the interesting 
fact that over four-fifths of our present congregations 
were planted and fostered by Home Mission funds; 
and that the net gain in membership each year equals 
the increase made in our Home Mission churches. 
Just in proportion as the work of Home Missions has 
been pressed, has our Church advanced. If it were 
not for the increases resulting from this aggressive work, 
our Church would have become steadily smaller and the 
place which it now holds among the great denomina- 
tions would have been impossible. Home Missions is 
the agency not only for bringing the gospel in its con- 
verting, uplifting and conserving power to bear upon the 
destitution of our land, but it is the enterprise through 
which the church is enlarged and strengthened. In 
saving America the church is saving itself! 

4. The Evangelization of the World. The Home 
Mission enterprise has a wider purpose than the saving 
of America. Its ultimate aim is world redemption. 
The true Home Missionary is not provincial, but is cos- 
mopolitan in his outlook. America is to be saved for 
its own sake and for the world's sake. It is the judg- 
ment of mission leaders everywhere that a Christian 
America will make a Christian world, and that an un- 
christian America will mean a world continuing in dark- 
ness and sin. There is no work of vaster import be- 
fore the Church of Christ than that of Christianizing 
this great land. A member of Congress recently de- 
clared: "The next five years will shape the next five cen- 
turies. The United States will shape the next five 
years. The church will determine the character of the 



HOME MISSION OBJECTIVES 29 

United States." The hope of the world is in America 
and her idea of Christianity. Home Missions will 
determine the destiny of the human race. 

Politically, commercially, religiously America touches 
all lands. Is she prepared to render her divinely- 
appointed service of evangelist to the nations? She 
has the material resources, but has she the spiritual 
equipment and the moral power that all of her contacts 
with other peoples will be healing and helpful? Before 
the great war twenty-six nations became republics 
following our own, but how many have become Chris- 
tian following the example and leadership of the United 
States? Can America commend Christianity to the 
non-Christian lands in a way that they will desire it 
when two-thirds of the American people are living out- 
side the enumerated Christian ranks and do not think 
enough of Jesus Christ and his Program to unite with 
his church? Dr. Josiah Strong says truly: 

"The greatest hindrances to the conversion of the 
heathen world come from nominally Christian lands. 
If America were thoroughly Christian, it would not take 
long for such an object lesson to work the conviction 
and conversion of all heathen peoples. If our American 
Christianity cannot purify our politics and elevate our 
ethical standards of business and establish just rela- 
tions between races and classes in our own midst, with 
our increased facility of communication, which is making 
the whole world a neighborhood and publishing our na- 
tional sins on the heathen housetop, this failure will soon 
paralyze our missionary efforts in all the world and sub- 
ject our missionaries to the taunt, 'Go back to America, 
and first cast the beam out of the eyes of your own 
countrymen and then come and cast the mote out of 
ours.' " 



30 UNFINISHED TASKS 

What the world has been waiting for through the cen- 
turies is a sample Christian nation. America has the 
best chance of being that sample. The only kind of 
Christianity that is going ultimately to succeed any- 
where is the kind that works in our own land with our 
own people. A vigorous and sustained Home Mission 
campaign will lift the whole level of our Christian living 
and make our national testimony count for Christ and 
his kingdom throughout the world. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Define the Home Mission enterprise. 

2. Compare the old Home Missions and the new. 

3. What are the four great Home Mission objectives? 

4. Name six perils that threaten the nation. 

5. Which do you consider the most dangerous? 

6. Are there other perils not enumerated? 

7. How are these evils to be corrected? 

8. What is the relation of Home Missions to denominational 

growth? 

9. In what way is Home Missions fundamental to world evan- 

gelization? 

10. What sentence do you consider the strongest indictment of 

Christian America in the entire chapter? 

11. What is the population of your town? The church member- 

ship? 



CHAPTER II. 
LAYING FOUNDATIONS 



The conversion of America is vital to the conversion 
of the world. 

It is given to the Church in America not only to 
influence, but to determine the destiny of the human 
race. 

America is to world-wide Christianity what the Amer- 
ican troops were to the Allies. Is American Christian- 
ity vital enough and spiritual enough to turn the tide? 

"The next five years will mould the next five cen- 
turies. The United States will shape the next five 
years. The Church will determine the character of 
the United States." — Member of Congress. 

"Surely the future looks black enough, yet it holds a 
hope, a single hope. One, and one power only, can 
arrest the descent and save us. That is the Christian 
religion. Democracy is but a side issue. The para- 
mount issue underlying the idea of democracy is the 
religion of Christ and Him crucified, the bed rock of 
civilization." — Henry Waiter son. 

"What is concerning me is the task before the Church 
of God. I trust that you will go back to your own coun- 
try and your own people, and in every way that you can 
urge upon them that in the days, the terrible days 
ahead of us, the days after the war, the Church shall 
not fail." — General Byng to Christian America. 



II. 

LAYING FOUNDATIONS 

There has been considerable discussion in recent years 
about the conservation of the nation's natural resources. 
This is a matter that should give us great concern. We 
are proud of our country and its wonderful wealth. 
Columns of figures could be multiplied to show that in 
land, mines, forests, water power, it is the richest na- 
tion on earth. In fact the terms "boundless" and "in- 
exhaustible" have been so generally applied to the na- 
tion's wealth that little thought has been given to the 
necessity of its conservation. But there has been an 
awakening. We are being warned that there is a limit 
to all things material. The wonderful riches with which 
God has blessed us must be safeguarded and developed, 
else they will be exhausted and our country materially 
impoverished. Our generation must not by reason of 
our prodigality and wastefulness impoverish future gen- 
erations. The blessings which one generation enjoys 
are to be held in trust for generations yet to come. 

This same principle of stewardship holds true with 
respect to the nation's spiritual resources. It is vastly 
more important to the nation's future well-being that 
the moral values be conserved and developed. The se- 
curity of a nation does not rest upon the number of its 
square miles, but upon the number of its square men. 
It is moral values and not material resources that deter- 
mine a nation's greatness. It matters little if we are 
increased in goods and our sons decay. Bigness must 
not be confused with greatness, or riches with nobility 



34 UNFINISHED TASKS 

of character. Bigness is an attribute of matter; great- 
ness is an attribute of mind. 

"Not gold, but only man can make 
A people great and strong; 
Men who for truth and honor's sake 
Stand forth and suffer long. 

"Brave men who work while others sleep, 
Who dare while others fly — ■ 
They build a nation's pillars deep 
And lift them to the sky." 

The Place of Christian Leadership. The work 
of home missions has been one of the greatest factors 
in the development of our country. Through the 
agency of the Church, the school and the home, it has 
sought to make the nation great by making the people 
righteous. It would be impossible to overestimate the 
service of the Christian missionary and the Christian 
minister in the progress and preservation of our nation's 
life. 

"Every line of human activity depends upon character 
for efficiency and stability. The rise and fall of the 
nation depends upon the rise and fall of the people who 
compose it. Jesus made the transformed individual 
the starting point for the civilization which he launched 
upon the world. Every business depends upon char- 
acter to give it solidity. The stability of the nation 
depends upon the character of its people. You cannot 
build a marble house out of mud. The church is God's 
agency for the production of character and the minister 
is the leader in this work. Civilization has never failed 
to go down when the morals of the people declined. 

"This is a matter of history so plain that he who runs 
can read. The work of the pulpit is fundamental to 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 35 

business because it creates honesty and integrity. It 
is fundamental to national life because it creates moral 
stability. The preacher may not be a politician, but 
he is one of the mightiest forces in building up the moral 
sentiment which determines the politics of the nation. 
He is not a diplomat, but he is the leader in building up 
the moral sentiment which determines what the diplo- 
mat will do. He may never set foot on foreign shore, 
but he leads the great movement of foreign missions 
which is creating a new Orient. After we have said all 
that can be said for other callings, we must acknowl- 
edge that the one which has done most for the world is 
the one that is moved by moral purposes. 

"The influence of kings and warriors and statesmen 
is not to be compared with the influence of the Church 
led by her ministers. When Jesus Christ came to earth 
to build up the Kingdom of God he chose the ministry 
as the profession through which he could best accom- 
plish his work. He could have been a statesman and 
made laws for the upholding of justice; he could have 
been a philanthropist and fed the hungry and clothed 
the naked ; he could have been a warrior and led armies 
in glorious triumph over the forces of evil; but he chose 
the ministry because through it his influence would go 
down to the fountains of national life and produce up- 
lifting statesmen and warriors and philanthropists in 
countless numbers. The influence of kings, statesmen 
and warriors is insignificant compared with his. He 
packed himself into a few men and sent them out to 
pass that indwelling power on to others; promising to 
build up a new civilization through them. 

"The students of the rise of civilization credit its up- 
ward progress to these men. Practically all the great 
uplifting movements that have marked the progress of 
Christian civilization have had their source in the teach- 
ings of the Christian pulpit. The prophets of the Old 
Dispensation and the Apostles and Preachers of the New 
Dispensation were the regenerators of the earth. It 
was not warriors and statesmen, but missionaries that 



36 UNFINISHED TASKS 

turned pagan lands, lifting whole peoples from beast- 
hood to manhood. It was not statesmen nor rulers, 
but preachers, that overthrew slavery, by producing 
among the people a sentiment which made its existence 
impossible. Augustine the Preacher laid the founda- 
tion of England's civilization. William Morrison op- 
ened China to civilization. William Carey did the same 
for India, and David Livingstone for Africa. Standing 
before the Cathedral of Wittenberg, Jean Paul uncov- 
ered his head and said: "The story of the German lan- 
guage is the story of Martin Luther's pulpit.'' 

"Daniel Webster, Anthony Froude, Rufus Choate, 
and many others like them have affirmed that represen- 
tative government came from Calvin's pulpit in Geneva. 
Daniel Webster asked: 'Where can you find one spot 
in the earth where a new social order has been created 
and the man who has digged the foundation was not a 
minister?' Where have the life giving waters of civiliza- 
tion sprang up save in the track of the Christian minis- 
try? Ruskin said : 'The Puritan pulpits were the springs 
of American liberty.' The Earl of Shaftesbury said that 
Charles Spurgeon by the spiritual work he did in London 
had done more for social reform and progress than any 
statesman of his era."* 



Promoting Organized Christianity. Home Mis- 
sions is the agency for the extension of organized Chris- 
tianity. Along with the growth of the nation has gone 
the growth of the Church. The preacher and the 
teacher have followed the pathfinder and the home- 
steader. As the railroads pushed their way across the 
plains and over the mountains, the Church sent out its 
Home Missionaries to gather the people into churches 
for instruction and worship that they might not forget 
God in their new environment. In these little groups 



*Dr. J. D. Rankin, "The Choice of a Profession/' 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 37 

of Christians of every denomination were men of faith 
and prayer, women of patience and trust. The mis- 
sionaries came and went, but their sacrifice was a never 
failing spring. They prayed and gave, they toiled and 
suffered that Christ's cause might be kept alive, and 
faith in God as He has been revealed to men might not 
perish from the land in which we live. 

Many of the churches thus organized may never have 
become self-supporting. They had to be aided by mis- 
sion funds, but they were instrumental in holding back 
the forces of evil that would have engulfed these new 
communities in their beginning. To this service Presi- 
dent Roosevelt pays tribute: 

"It was such missionary work that prevented the pio- 
neers from sinking perilously near the level of savagery 
against which they contended. Without this the con- 
quest of this continent would have had little but the 
animal side. Because of it, deep beneath and through 
the national character there runs that power of fierce 
adherence to a .lofty ideal upon which the safety of the 
nation will ultimately depend." 

Every denomination in this country owes its present 
standing to its Home Mission operations. From four- 
fifths to nine-tenths of all the Protestant churches in 
North America had their origin in Home Missions. 
Their buildings were erected wholly or in part by Home 
Mission money. Of the first one hundred and nineteen 
colleges in this country one hundred and four were Chris- 
tian colleges. In 1890, of the four hundred and fifteen 
colleges in the United States, three hundred and sixteen 
belonged to Christian denominations. There is not a 
college in the Mississippi Valley over sixty years old 
that cannot be traced to some Home Missionary. When 



38 UNFINISHED TASKS 

we find that thirty-eight per cent of the names mentioned 
in the biographical dictionaries are the sons or grand- 
sons of Christian ministers, we realize what these Home 
Missionaries and the institutions they founded have done 
for the laws, the literature and the liberties of the Re- 
public. 

Increasing Demands. The work of the Church is 
being enlarged year by year. Our educational institu- 
tions are making heavier demands upon the resources 
of the denomination. The colleges and seminaries are 
seeking larger endowments and better equipment to 
meet the requirements of their work. For our aged and 
disabled ministers and for the orphans of the Church a 
more adequate provision must be made. The work in 
the foreign field is steadily enlarging and is calling for 
more workers and for greater financial support. 

The needs of the exceptional and dependent popula- 
tions at home must be met. If the Church is to continue 
its effort among the Indians and is to enlarge its work 
among the millions of immigrants that are pouring in 
upon us like a flood; among the mountain people where 
the need is so urgent and the work so blessed ; if the con- 
gested masses in the cities are to be reached ; if the Negro 
race is to have a gospel of purity and right-living 
preached unto it; if the 58,000,000 people out of the 
Church and away from Christ in our own land are to be 
won, and America is to become a " nation whose God is 
the Lord," there will be need for many more workers, 
and still more money will be required to sustain them. 
As the missionary enterprises of the Church are enlarged 
the resources of the Church must correspondingly be 
increased. 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 39 

Increasing Ability. There are two ways for the 
Church to meet this growing need. 

(a) The Development of Existing Congregations. The 
present membership can give more. A greater sense of 
stewardship is one of the mightiest calls of Christ to 
men today. The members of the Presbyterian Church 
more and more are recognizing this responsibility as the 
claim of Christ and his work is presented to them. The 
growth of our benevolent contributions through the 
efforts of the Assembly's Stewardship Committee has 
been one of the outstanding developments of the Church. 
The whole work of the Church has been put forward as 
a result of these campaigns. Our Church stands near 
the head of all the great Protestant denominations of 
this country in per capita gifts. Yet there are a vast 
number of churches, containing a large proportion of 
our membership that have not been reached by the 
stewardship appeal and have no share in the progressive 
program of our Church. The campaign must go on 
until every church is enlisted in the world-wide work of 
the Kingdom and every member giving to every cause. 
This is necessary for the safety of the individual, for the 
prosperity of the Church, and the cause of Christ. 

(b) The Organization of New Congregations. To en- 
large the Church is to enlarge its resources. There are 
millions of wealth in the hands of people outside the 
Church, in places where we have no organization. If 
the Church can win men who have money and who are 
making money they will hereafter give of their wealth 
to help others. The increasing ability of the Church 
through its Home Mission work is forcibly illustrated 
in the contributions of the Home Mission States. The 
Home Mission Synods of Appalachia, Florida, Louisiana, 



40 UNFINISHED TASKS 

Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, whose churches almost 
without exception have been organized and sustained 
by Home Mission agencies, contribute to the single 
cause of Foreign Missions more than the entire Church 
spends through the Assembly's Home Mission Commit- 
tee upon the work of Evangelism, Church Erection and 
Sustentation in those Synods. Every new church or- 
ganized in a growing community adds to the ability of 
the denomination to sustain its ever-enlarging work. 

The advance of God's Kingdom in every field has al- 
ways been by the way of the little struggling Home Mis- 
sion churches, which in time become strong, constitu- 
ting a permanent endowment which yields enormous 
interest. The great majority of the churches of our As- 
sembly, those which give most loyally to all mission 
causes, were begun as Home Mission enterprises. They 
represent the strength of the denomination, and make 
possible the support of the great denominational enter- 
prises that are lighting up the dark places in our own 
and are carrying the message of light and life to the 
millions dwelling in heathen lands. 

Opportunities for Growth. The openings for de- 
nominational expansion have not all been occupied. 
There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed. 

(a) In the great Southwest, a region with more than 
twice the area of the original thirteen States, there are 
vast stretches of territory, rapidly filling up with set- 
tlers, where our Church has not gone. Texas has a ter- 
ritory larger than Germany or France, and some of her 
Presbyteries are greater in area than some of the east- 
ern Synods. Oklahoma is larger by 8,000 square miles 
than all of New England. Arkansas and Louisiana are 
old States, but are just beginning their real development. 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 



41 



If these States are ever as densely populated as some of 
the eastern States they will contain more than 125,000,- 
000 people, so great is the extent and the possibilities of 
this Southwestern Empire. 

In the early days our fathers built their houses, and 
then the church close by. Today the church comes last 
if it comes at all. The gospel privileges in this great 
region are totally inadequate for the multitudes who 
need them today as never before. The American Sur- 
vey reports that 5,000 churches are needed west of the 
Mississippi River to care for communities now unevan- 
gelized. In Oklahoma, which is typical of the whole 
Southwest, only eighteen out of every one hundred per- 
sons are in the Christian Church. In Arkansas it is 
possible to have a church of a million members, and not 
take one from an existing organization. In this state 
there are twenty-six counties in which the Southern Pres- 
byterian Church has not a Sunday-school or a mission. 
In Louisiana, with its vast resources and multitudes of 
people there are eight parishes without a single Protest- 




'THE NEW AND THE OLD' 



42 UNFINISHED TASKS 

ant church of any denomination. In the matter of 
Christianizing this Empire of the Southwest, the Church 
has only made a beginning. We are like men on a moun- 
tain trail. As yet we have only climbed the foothills, 
the supreme ranges are just coming into sight. If the 
boundless wealth of this great region is acquired by men 
who for neglect are not Christians, it will become a 
menace instead of a help to the forces of righteousness 
in the years to come. 

(b) The Southeast is just entering upon the era of the 
largest development. This is evidenced by the rapid 
growth in population of all the southern cities. Along 
the line of one railroad over four hundred new industries 
were opened in a single year, bringing thousands of peo- 
ple into those communities, the forerunners of the thous- 
ands yet to come. With the completion of the Muscle 
Shoals project at Florence, Alabama, and the production 
of cheap fertilizers for the farmers and cheap power for 
the manufacturers, the South will be started in the way 
to unmeasured growth and prosperity. 

In Georgia 600,000 white people are out of the Church. 
There are fifty-four counties in the state in which the 
Southern Presbyterian Church has no organized work. 
The situation in Georgia is typical of all the southeast- 
ern states. The mining and manufacturing sections of 
Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and West Vir- 
ginia comprise a region of almost limitless material re- 
sources. The foundations of great industries are being 
laid. This region perhaps offers more varied and more 
promising opportunities to extend the borders of the 
Church and win a great people for service in the King- 
dom of God than any other section of the country. In 
many places the missionary organizations have not been 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 43 

able to meet the needs of the growing and congested 
populations. The forces of evil are organized and multi- 
plied in number, while scores of communities are with- 
out the ministration of the gospel by any church. 

(c) In many rural communities there are opportuni- 
ties for growth. The Presbyterian Church has neglect- 
ed the country communities to its own disadvantage. 
In losing the country we have largely lost the city. It 
is true that in many rural places the church is difficult 
to maintain. Many of them are unable without assist- 
ance to support a minister. These churches must not 
be abandoned, but must be strengthened and encour- 
aged. They make large contributions to the cause of 
Christ. Their gifts in money may not be large, but they 
contribute that which is far more valuable than money. 
They send their sons and daughters by the hundreds 
to be workers and supporters of city churches. There 
are country congregations that for years have been send- 
ing elders, deacons and Sunday-school teachers to build 
up the churches in the city. Our city churches could 
not long survive if it were not for the constant accessions 
of strength from the country. 

1 'Whatever there is today of virtue, righteousness, 
human brotherhood and the fear and love of God in 
American life is largely the fruit of the labors of country 
preachers and country churches." 

There are country groups ministered to by a Home 
Mission pastor that have furnished more ministers and 
missionaries than three or four self-supporting churches 
in a city with their hundreds of members. One Home 
Mission field supported by the Assembly's Committee 
has in the past eight years furnished four mountain 



44 UNFINISHED TASKS 

missionaries, two foreign volunteers, and five minis- 
terial candidates. The little church at Soddy, Tennes- 
see, is a conspicuous example of the value of the coun- 
try church as a ministerial recruiting ground. This 
church never had more than seventy-five members, and 
for years received help from Home Mission funds. Since 
its organization in 1829 it has sent seventeen men into 
the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. There are 
Presbyteries that have not made so large a contribution. 

The cause of the country church is too urgent and 
means too much to the welfare of the nation and of the 
Kingdom to allow it to be neglected. It is true that 
many of the old families which were the strength of the 
church and the community are moving away, but new 
families are coming in to take their places. There is no 
greater or more important service that Home Missions 
can render the cause of Christ than that of sustaining 
and keeping alive the country church, that its rich red 
blood may be poured into the currents of the Church's 
life. 

Two things are needed if the Church is to enlarge its 
borders and increase its resources. 

1. Greater Evangelistic Effort. The spirit and pur- 
pose of Evangelism lies at the base of all Christian effort. 
Dr. Lyman Beecher was once asked, "What do you count 
the greatest thing a human being can be or do?" He re- 
plied, "The greatest thing one human being can do is to 
bring another human being to Jesus Christ as Saviour." 
To win another to Christ is the first duty and the highest 
privilege of every Christian. "He first findeth his own 
brother Simon . . . and he brought him to Jesus." It 
is the initial step in the conquest of the world for Christ. 
Conversion and then culture is the order of the King- 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 45 

dom. Men must be led to accept the invitation, ''Come," 
before they can heed the command, "Go." It is only 
through earnest evangelistic effort that the Church can 
make any real progress in winning the great multitudes 
of lost and indifferent in every community. 

The evangelistic situation that confronts the churches 
in America has been one demanding serious and prayer- 
ful consideration. During the nineteenth century the 
Church made great progress in winning souls to Christ. 
In 1800 only seven persons out of every one hundred 
were members of the Church. In 1850, the number had 
increased to fifteen out of every one hundred. In 1900, 
there were twenty-four church members in every one 
hundred. Since that date the growth of the Church has 
not kept pace with the increase in population. The 
nation has been growing more rapidly than the Church. 
For several years the Church in America has been re- 
porting a decreasing number received on profession of 
faith each year, and the lowest level for thirty-five years 
was reached in 1919. But there is reason for encourage- 
ment in the fact that the tide has turned. The Evan- 
gelistic Commission of the Federal Council reports more 
additions to the Protestant churches in this country in 
1921 than were ever received in the same length of time. 
In 1921 the Southern Presbyterian Church showed the 
same improvement. We were able to report to the 
Assembly 24,369 additions upon profession, the largest 
number ever received in any one year in our history. 

The Assembly in 1921 adopted the following Evange- 
listic Program and recommended it to the churches as 
the goal of their evangelistic efforts: 

(a) Fifteen per cent of membership added upon pro- 
fession of faith: 



46 UNFINISHED TASKS 

(b) Twenty-five per cent increased attendance on 
church services; 

(c) A Sunday-school enrollment at least equal to the 
church membership; 

(d) At least one life enlisted for definite religious work 
for each congregation; 

(e) A family altar in every home; 

(/) The establishment of mission Sunday-schools and 
churches wherever possible. 

The Executive Committee of Home Missions has been 
entrusted with the responsibility for the promotion of 
the spirit and message of Evangelism throughout the 
Church. In the Evangelistic Department the Committee 
employs a corps of able evangelists — General, Synodical, 
Presby terial ; and evangelists for special classes — Mexi- 
cans, Indians, Negroes, Mountain people, and prisoners. 
These workers are engaged in holding evangelistic meet- 
ings during the year. Every missionary and Home 
Mission pastor aided by the committee is commissioned 
as an evangelist. Through the efforts of the workers 
aided by the Assembly's Committee 8,954 were added 
(Annual Report 1921) to the Church upon profession 
of their faith in Christ. 

The Local Church the Unit of Power. It is in the 
local church that the effort must be made and the re- 
sults obtained. A special evangelistic service is helpful, 
and every church should make this special effort, but it 
should only be the beginning of a soul-winning campaign. 
No congregation can meet its evangelistic responsibility 
by having one special meeting during the year, and then 
resting twelve months before another effort is made. 
Someone has said, "God rarely goes over a cold pastor 
to reach a cold session; God rarely goes over a cold ses- 
sion to reach a cold congregation; God never goes over 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 47 

a cold congregation to reach a cold community." The 
pastor and session are the ordained leaders and they will 
awaken the congregation only as they themselves are 
stirred by their responsibility. When pastors accept 
the responsibility of leadership, when officers accept 
their task as a sacred trust, God has an agency through 
which to work. 

A Congregational Program. The records show 
that the churches that begin the year with a definite 
program of work and a definite objective are the churches 
that close the year with the most encouraging results. 
While it is a continuous effort to be sustained by earnest 
prayer and supplication, a dead level in the church's 
program can be avoided by the stimulus of special days 
and special occasions. 

The Communion Season can be made a time of in- 
gathering. While it is true that in many churches souls 
should be converted every Sabbath, as a matter of fact, 
the quarterly communion is thought of as the time when 
conversions take place. 

Decision Day in the Sunday-school is an unusual op- 
portunity for pastors, teachers and parents to press the 
claims of Christ upon the children and youth in the 
Sunday-school and in the home. In many churches 
Decision Day is one of the great occasions of the church 
year. 

Special Evangelistic Service. Every church should 
have a special series of meetings for one or two weeks 
during the year. Heart stirring messages day after day 
are greatly blessed in reaching the lost. 

The Easter Season can be made a time of great in- 
gathering. In many churches this is made the climax 
of the church year. It is a season when hearts are 



48 UNFINISHED TASKS 

greatly impressed, and many will accept Christ as Sa- 
viour. 

Membership Day. This is just what the name indi- 
cates — a time for gathering in new members. Everyone 
is asked to assist in bringing into church fellowship all 
for whom that church is responsible. In a certain city 
there was held what was called "Church Letter Day," 
when a general search was made for certificates of mem- 
bership and several thousand were found. In every city 
there are many who are members of churches elsewhere 
who should be brought into fellowship with the church 
where they live. 

The Assembly's evangelistic goal will be reached not 
by any one evangelistic campaign, but by a steady and 
constant emphasis in pastoral and personal evangelism 
in all our churches. No greater distinction can be given 
any Church or denomination than that it is a soul-sav- 
ing Church. 

2. A Campaign of Church Building. The Church 
that builds most grows most. Church Erection is only 
another way of saying Church Expansion. A church 
cannot hope to prosper or meet its full responsibility to 
the community in which it is located, without a house of 
worship. Many newly organized churches are unable 
to build without assistance either by a donation or loan 
from a building fund. All great denominations recog- 
nize this help as a fundamental and necessary part of 
their Home Mission work. A contribution for a new 
church building is not a gift but an investment in the ex- 
tension of the Kingdom. Probably no denomination 
has been slower to realize the importance of making 
these investments than our own. 

The total Building Fund of the Assembly's Commit- 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 49 

tee is about $100,000. Other denominations doing mission 
work in this country have funds from $400,000 to $5,- 
000,000. Because of this inadequate provision for 
Church Erection much of the fruit of the labors of our 
splendid ministers and Home Missionaries has been lost. 
The tragedy of our Home Mission work has been the 
number of newly organized churches in places of prom- 
ise that have been declined assistance, when a small 
gift or a loan at a critical time from the General Assem- 
bly would have put them in the way of growth and 
progress. The records show that the Presbyteries in 
which the largest number of churches have been helped 
from the meager funds of the Committee have had the 
greatest growth. If the Assembly's Committee had been 
given the means with which to accept a fourth of the 
promising opportunities to plant new churches in grow- 
ing centers that it was compelled to decline during the 
past twenty-five years, the Southern Presbyterian 
Church could have a membership of 500,000 which, at 
the present rate of giving, would increase our benevolent 
contributions $1,489,000 per year. The loss to the 
Church is seen, when it is considered the number of 
additional missionaries this increased amount would 
support. Church Extension is fundamental to the 
Church's world-wide missionary program. Nowhere 
has there been a sadder denominational neglect or a 
greater denominational loss. 

Great Loan Fund Needed. This is the time of the 
greatest growth in our Church's history. There seems 
to be a general revival of church building throughout 
the Assembly. Congregations are outgrowing their 
places of worship. Buildings that answered the purpose 
of a former day are largely inadequate for the demands 



50 UNFINISHED TASKS 

of the present. Sunday-schools are needing new and 
becter equipment for their work. A survey of the Pres- 
byteries show a present need of three hundred and thirty- 
three new church buildings and two hundred and ninety- 
nine manses and missionary homes, besides a number 
ol mission school buildings and dormitories. The Gen- 
eral Assembly, because of the opportunities that have 
been lost to the Church and the necessity for entering 
many new and inviting fields, urged the immediate im- 
portance of a $500,000 Building Fund, and placed this 
amount in the Assembly's Equipment Campaign. 

Such a fund would enable the Committee to help hun- 
dreds of churches. Many of them would immediately 
become self-supporting and contribute liberally to our 
denominational enterprises. Every dollar provided by 
the Assembly's Committee would mean four dollars 
provided by the congregation assisted. A $500,000 fund 
for Church Building would mean the investment of at 
least two and one-half million dollars in new church 
equipment. The children of this world are wise in their 
generation. They are looking ahead; they are doubling 
their plants, building for the future as well as for the 
present. Shall the children of light be less wise in their 
day? 

Fitting Memorial. Thirty years ago Mr. W. A. 
Moore, an elder in the First Presbyterian Church, At- 
lanta, Georgia, deeply interested in the extension of the 
cause of Christ in the world, left $5,000 to the Executive 
Committee of Home Missions, to aid mission churches 
secure homes of worship. The Moore Fund has as- 
sisted one hundred and four churches in building. Is 
there another $5,000 that has accomplished as much in 
the upbuilding of the Southern Presbyterian Church, 



LAYING FOUNDATIONS 51 

and the extension of the Kingdom of God in the world? 
These little churches, resonant with Christian praise 
every Sabbath are better than all the cold marble ever 
chiseled or bronze moulded to perpetuate the memory 
of a child of God. 

The Executive Committee of Home Missions will hold 
sums of $500.00 or more, contributed by church, society, 
family or individual, as Memorial Funds, bearing the 
name of the donor, or of any other whose memory it is 
desired to honor or perpetuate. A memorial fund is 
loaned at low interest to a worthy church, and when re- 
paid is loaned to another, and thus goes on reproducing 
and multiplying itself through the years. Persons de- 
siring to leave their principal to Home Missions, but 
who need the income therefrom during their lifetime, 
can render a very real service to the cause of Church 
Erection by investing the amount in an Annuity Bond, on 
which the Home Mission Committee pays interest dur- 
ing the life of the investor, the money becoming a part 
of the Assembly's Church Erection Fund at his death. 

4 * Next to the longing for immortality, which God 
Himself has planted in every human breast, is the desire 
to perpetuate our own name or the name of those we 
love and honor. But the most sanguine builder of monu- 
ments has never produced a memorial which would 
either withstand the ravages of time or increase in beauty 
and strength as the years go by. 

"It is the distinction and glory of a memorial loan fund, 
that it is strong where other monuments are weak. 
Here is something of a material nature that has in it 
the quality of life. It is a perpetual source of benedic- 
tion, going forth on errands of mercy and helpfulness 
to return with increased power for usefulness. 

"Bishop H. C. Morrison describes it as an 'everlasting 



52 UNFINISHED TASKS 

benediction; an immortal good Samaritan, with wine 
and oil and bandages for the bleeding and helpless 
churches of the land.' Going to the West, it fortifies 
a point; returning to the East it repairs a breach in the 
wall. It lives for all times and lives for God. It will 
work on and on after you have ceased to work, and will 
come to you with exceeding increase in eternity." 

How can men believe without a preacher? And how 
can a preacher preach effectively without a house in 
which the hearers may gather to hear? A church build- 
ing is a logical and necessary part of preaching the gos- 
pel. It is a vital means in establishing the Kingdom of 
God in the world. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. How does stewardship apply to material resources? To 

spiritual? 

2. Prove that Home Mission service is (a) world service; (b) 

patriotic service; (c) denominational service; (d) educa- 
tional service. 

3. What are some of the increasing demands upon the resources 

of the Church? 

4. What cause is fundamental to the Church's progress? 

5. In what two ways can the Church meet the growing need for 

workers and money? 

6. Is the South adequately churched? Prove your answer 

four times. 

7. In what way is the country church important? 

8. What two things are essential if the Church is to go forward? 

9. What is the Assembly's evangelistic goal? Has your church 

reached it? 

10. What is the value of special days and seasons in the work of 

the Church? 

11. Why is an adequate Church Building Fund a denominational 

necessity? 

12. In what different ways is a "Memorial Fund" a blessing? 



CHAPTER III. 

PAYING A DEBT 

Section I. — Indians 



The Indian of the old trail was a religious being. 
The very perils and hardships of the chase and war- 
path created in him a longing for some relationship 
with the unseen world of mystery round about him. 

But the old Indian has passed on, leaving behind 
chiefly such vestiges of the old regime as war paint and 
feathers, bow and arrow, blanket and moccasin. 

The Indian of today is just coming into citizenship. 
He meets the demands of this new transition period. 
He has entered upon the highway of knowledge and 
cannot turn back to the old trails. 

Less than one-third of the Indian population is re- 
lated to the various Christian communions; approxi- 
mately 46,000 are neglected by Christian agencies and 
unreached by Roman Catholic or Protestant mission- 
aries. 

Nine thousand Indian youths heard their country's 
call in the late war and left their tribal clans to fight 
for liberty. Six thousand were volunteers. 



That the Christian churches of this land owe a debt 
to the Indian, the eternal debt of love forever unpaid, 
which proximity and the claims of neighborliness 
bring, no one will question. The long-deferred pay- 
ment of this debt calls for immediate settlement before 
the night comes on and the people are left in their dark- 
ness. 

— American Survey. 



III. 

PA YING A DEBT 
I. The Indian 

Of all the peoples that go to make up our great coun- 
try there is none that has a larger claim upon the 
Church's interest and effort than the North American 
Indian. As old as the European settlement on these 
shores, so old is our debt to this race. The original 
owners of the continent, they were here to welcome our 
forefathers who sought in this new world a refuge from 
the tyranny of the old, but who in turn, with a few 
noble exceptions, drove the owners from their ancestral 
lands in utter disregard of moral right or legal justice. 
Someone has said, "To the Indian we owe a debt of 
financial obligation that money can never pay; a debt 
of legal obligation that treaty after treaty has but in- 
creased; a debt of moral obligation increasing year by 
year as the Indian is increasingly degraded by vices 
learned from his white neighbors." 

Not a Vanishing Race. The Indian has furnished 
more than one essayist and public speaker with material 
on "The Vanishing Race of Redmen." But he has not 
vanished! While it is true that some tribes have be- 
come extinct and some are decreasing, yet the loss has 
been more than balanced by the gain in others. The 
last census placed the number in the continental United 
States at 336,000. They are divided into not less than 
two hundred and seventy-five tribal bands and clans, 
all speaking different languages and dialects, scattered 



56 UNFINISHED TASKS 

on one hundred and forty-seven reservations and differ- 
ent communities, in practically every state in the Union. 
The largest number of Indians in any state is in Okla- 
homa, where there are 120,000. The others are largely 
confined on great reservations in Arizona, California, 
New Mexico and other western states, or scattered in 
smaller numbers on small reservations throughout the 
East. 

Presbyterian Beginnings. The Presbyterian Church 
from the very first has shown an interest in the Indian's 
material and spiritual welfare, and has had a part with 
the other great denominations in the evangelization of 
the Indian people. At the present time there are, ac- 
cording to the report of the Indian Bureau, twenty-six 
different boards representing twenty-one evangelical 
Protestant denominations at work among them. Par- 
tial statistics available from eighteen of these denomi- 
nations show that there are missions in over one hundred 
tribes and tribal bands, with five hundred churches and 
as many out stations. More than two hundred and 
fifty white workers and three hundred native helpers, 
interpreters and assistants serve these points. The an- 
nual expenditure of all Indian missions, according to the 
report of the Home Missions Council, does not exceed 
$300,000.00. 

The work of the Catholic Church is perhaps more ex- 
tensive than that of the Protestant. The Commissioner 
of Indian Affairs reports that there are 58,646 church- 
going Catholics, while 44,730 are members of the Pro- 
testant Churches. It is estimated that less than one- 
third of the Indian population is identified with any 
Christian Church, and approximately 46,000 are in tribes 
where there is no opportunity to learn of Jesus Christ 



PAYING A DEBT 57 

from either Protestant or Roman Catholic missionaries. 
There are 26,000 children of school age without school 
provision of any kind. The Home Missions Council is 
undertaking to allocate to the various Churches respon- 
sibility for these unreached tribes. The Executive 
Committee of Home Missions was asked to accept the 
responsibility for an unreached tribe in New Mexico. 
The Committee was unable, on account of inadequate 
funds and the inability to find workers, to accept this 
added responsibility. 

The Work of Our Church. At the beginning of the 
Civil War the five civilized tribes in Oklahoma sided 
with the Confederacy. It is estimated that the Choc- 
taw nation furnished 3,000 soldiers for service, and the 
Cherokee nation 2,000. The Indian work of the South- 
ern Presbyterian Church began with the organization 
of the General Assembly. It has always had a large 
place in the Church's sympathy and prayers, though 
the financial support has never been equal to the need 
and the opportunity. 

The Indian Missions was the first Foreign Mission 
work attempted by the Southern Presbyterian Church, 
and for twenty-eight years it was a responsibility of the 
Foreign Mission Committee. In 1889 the Indian work 
was transferred to the Executive Committee of Home 
Missions and since that time has been an important 
factor in the department of Home Missions. 

In the Minutes of the first Assembly of 1861, this ac- 
tion is recorded : . 

Resolved: 

2. That the Assembly accepts with joyful gratitude 
to God the care of these missions among our Southwes- 
tern Indian tribes, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, 



58 UNFINISHED TASKS 

Seminoles and Cherokees, thus thrown upon them by 
His providence; missions whose whole history has been 
signalized by a degree, of success attending few other 
modern missions; to a people comprising nearly seventy 
thousand souls, to whom we are bound by obligations 
of special tenderness and strength, and whose spiritual 
interests must ever be dear to the Christians of this land. 

3 so at the very moment of commencing 

our separate existence we find them forming in fact an 
organized part of our body; and also in the promptitude 
with which our Church has advanced to their support — 
the Assembly recognizes most gratefully the clear fore- 
shadowing of the Divine purpose to make our beloved 
Church an eminently missionary Church; and a heart- 
stirring call upon all her people to engage in this blessed 
work with new zeal and self-denial. 

What has Been Wrought? During the sixty years 
of our service, about three thousand have been received 
into the Church. At present there are in Indian Pres- 
bytery twenty-two churches, with seven hundred mem- 
bers. The Indian churches are all in the country, many 
of them miles from any railroad. Some have simple log 
churches. Yet an Indian church has no Sabbath with- 
out divine worship. If there is no minister, an elder or 
some member will conduct the service. In this way the 
church is kept alive. The Indians love their Church and 
contribute to its work. In every financial campaign the 
Indian churches have subscribed their quota. The pres- 
ent small membership is due to the fact that when Okla- 
homa became a State, and the allotment of the land was 
made to the tribes, many of our members moved away 
from their old homes. While they have been lost to our 
Church, they are in the membership of other denomina- 
tions. It has always been difficult to secure ministers 
for the Indian churches. This has been the supreme 






PAYING A DEBT 59 

need and the great lack through all the years. There is 
no greater field of service for a consecrated minister of 
Jesus Christ than to be pastor, minister and friend to 
these grateful and appreciative people. In this work 
there have been some of the noblest men in our ministry. 
The following account by a visitor to a recent meeting 
of Indian Presbytery shows something of the love and 
devotion of the Indians to their Church: 

''Going to Presbytery with the Indians, does not 
mean to rush off at the last minute or perhaps wait until 
the second session, rush through with the most impor- 
tant business, get leave of absence and rush home before 
Presbytery closes. On the contrary, every minister and 
elder is there unless prevented by serious illness, and 
usually takes the entire family. Many other families 
go as visitors, especially those whose women are repre- 
sentatives to the Presbyterial, and all are present before 
opening session and remain until the close. This Pres- 
bytery convened Tuesday night and did not close until 
the following Monday morning. It included a Sunday- 
school institute and meeting of the Brotherhood, and 
was truly a time of great spiritual refreshing. Of the 
one hundred and twenty-five adults present, only three 
were white people. 

"The five or six families belonging to this church had 
all moved over and camped in two-room shacks near the 
church, to entertain the Presbytery. Beds, stoves and 
dishes galore were in evidence. In one corner of the 
church, bedding was piled high, and many men slept 
on its floor. In the camp houses, beds covered the floors. 
Seven of their nine ministers were present, and fifteen 
elders, which shows their interest in their church courts. 
Each day opened with a sunrise prayer meeting. There 
was the usual eleven o'clock public worship, also at 
seven-thirty daily. 

"A most encouraging report was: Eleven candidates 
for the ministry, and two licentiates. Soon their churches 



PAYING A DEBT 61 

will be supplied. Again, we could learn a lesson from 
their faithful devotion. Their membership is so scat- 
tered, many of them living long distances from their 
church. Their work is carried on under such handicaps 
and difficulties as would discourage the average white 
church of the present, and cause many to abandon the 
work. The growth of the Indian churches means more 
of work, of effort and self-sacrifice than we can possibly 
understand, and is a strong appeal for our interest, sym- 
pathy and prayers. 

"And the children! What an appeal they are! Think 
of sixty or seventy children and young people attending 
Presbytery! We photographed fifty-five and did not 
get all. Children are taught the Bible, catechism, and 
to pray. They attend worship and sit quietly and rev- 
erently, then join in the singing as heartily as their elders. 
How they love to sing. Their voices are musical and 
although much of the singing was in Choctaw, the old 
familiar hymns of our Church were recognized, and one 
was conscious of their spirit of worship. In every ses- 
sion we felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, and know 
that Presbytery means much to these people. 

"Sunday was a wonderful day. It opened with the 
sunrise prayer meeting. The Sunday-school numbered 
one hundred and eleven. The eleven o'clock worship 
was followed by a memorial service for the deceased wife 
of a minister. At three o'clock there was a strong ser- 
mon. All professing Christians were asked to rise. It 
looked like every one did. When those who were not 
Christians were asked to rise, there were only nine in all 
that congregation that stood. 

"Monday morning, following the sunrise prayer meet- 
ing, the entire crowd assembled for farewell, forming in 
one large semi-circle in front of the church, men on one 
side, women on the other with a group of young men in 
center to lead the singing. As they sang one after an- 
other of the cherished hymns, the members of the local 
church, children and all, passed down the line shaking 
hands and telling their guests good-bye. The minister 



62 UNFINISHED TASKS 

at head of semi-circle next fell in line, and one by one 
they followed until finally each had shaken hands with 
the other and all said good-bye. It was a most impres- 
sive farewell, and there were not many dry eyes in the 
gathering. The older ones are rapidly passing away. 
The coming generation will present a new problem to 
the Church."* 

The Committee also ministers to the Alabama In- 
dians, a small tribe near Kiam, Texas. The work was 
opened in 1881. The missionaries found this tribe, 
wearing blankets and feathers, heathen in a nominal 
Christian land. After forty years of service every per- 
son in the reservation between the ages of twelve and 
thirty can read English, and practically every adult is 
a member of the Presbyterian Church. For twenty-five 
years Rev. and Mrs. C. W. Chambers have labored in 
this field, Mrs. Chambers as teacher and Mr. Chambers 
as pastor of the church. Their only daughter, born in 
the reservation, is now a missionary in Africa. 

Oklahoma Presbyterian College for Girls. It was 
early recognized that the Church's greatest opportunity 
is with the youth, and Mission schools have been the 
chief evangelistic agency in all mission work. Many 
devoted Christian women whose hearts God had touched 
with the Indian appeal, gave themselves to the Indian 
children out of pity and love and a desire to serve. In 
many communities the mission teacher was the only 
white person. Largely through their efforts the Five 
Civilized Tribes have been lifted from paganism into the 
light of Christianity. With the coming of Statehood 
and the public school, many of the church schools were 
discontinued. One of these Indian Mission Schools has 



*Mrs. C. S. Everts. 



PAYING A DEBT 63 

grown into the Oklahoma Presbyterian College for Girls. 
It is the largest and most important missionary institu- 
tion of the Southern Presbyterian Church in Oklahoma, 
or all the Southwest. This school wields perhaps the 
greatest Christian influence of any institution in this 
new state. Only eighteen per cent of the population 
of Oklahoma is connected with the Christian Church. 
Almost without exception the students in this Christian 
school are brought to Christ, and they go out to found 
Christian homes and to be leaders and helpers in Chris- 
tian work. 

The girls attending this school do not all come from 
the homes of our Presbyterian Indians, but they come 
from homes that are not Christian, and from homes in 
remote country districts with little idea of civic improve- 
ment, home making or sanitation. Being a mission school 
the charges are very low. Many poor girls are able to 
work their way through by serving in the dining room, 
or in the care of the dormitories. They are taken often- 
times with little or no preparation, and careful teachers 
lead them through the several grades. They are sent 
out not only improved in personal appearance and mental 
development, but strong Christian characters ready for 
efficient service. The following quotation is taken from 
a letter written by a sixteen year old Choctaw girl. She 
came from a home in the Kiamichi Mountains in Eastern 
Oklahoma: 

"I came here four years ago, and now the college has 
grown almost as dear to me as my own home, for many 
different reasons. Not only have I attained knowledge 
from a worldly standpoint, but I have also attained a 
better and more trusting conception of Jesus Christ 
than I ever had before, which I feel has benefited me 



64 UNFINISHED TASKS 

more than all the worldly knowledge I could ever mas- 
ter. I am thankful I am not the only one who has had 
this experience, but almost all the girls have." 

Another girl, coming from an Indian home, graduating 
from the College, is President of the District Christian 
Endeavor Union, a teacher in the public school and an 
active leader in Christian work in her community. 
Another came to the College from a town in which there 
is not a church of any denomination. She was brought 
to Christ, and sent home a Christian. It is impossible 
to measure the influence for good of this Mission School 
in this great and growing state. If the Indian mission 
work of our Church had accomplished no more than the 
establishment of the Oklahoma Presbyterian College, 
as an institution for righteousness in this new state, it 
would have been abundantly worth while. 

Christian Workers Needed. There is an urgent 
call for pastors to serve the Indian churches and train 
them in the way of Christian living; for Sunday-school 
missionaries to gather the thousands of young people 
growing up in this new country without Christian train- 
ing. A great and needy field awaits anyone desiring an 
opportunity to render a real service to Christ and the 
Kingdom of God. Our Church acknowledged its debt 
to the Indians in the beginning, and it is for us who live 
in this day to see that it is paid. 

Mrs. Bella McCallum Gibbons, who has spent the 
greater part of her life in work among the Choctaws and 
who knows their needs perhaps as well as anyone in the 
Church, says: 

"The Indians are fast becoming civilized, but the con- 
ditions which surround them are more deplorable than 



PAYING A DEBT . 65 

they were fifty years ago. Then the missionary had 
only to fight the traditions, the superstitions and cus- 
toms of the Indians. Now the greatest battle the mis- 
sionary has is to keep the Indian from falling into the 
vices with which our own race is fast surrounding him. 
Sabbath-breaking, drunkenness, divorce, immoral liv- 
ing, grafting, cheating, are vices that have crept into 
their country. Some to all appearances have come to 
stay. Indians are by nature a reverent people. Chris- 
tian Indians reverence the Sabbath, yet Sunday baseball 
has been the means of leading hundreds of Indian boys 
away from home, away from all church influences, away 
from religion, away from God. Oklahoma is by its 
Constitution a temperance state, yet unscrupulous per- 
sons by the hundreds manage to evade the law and sell 
intoxicating liquors. And the worst thing about it is 
that it is whiskey of the vilest sort, oftentimes made 
from chemicals of a poisonous nature. They sell it to 
Indians by the quart, by the gallon, and by the case. 
Anyone who knows anything about Indians knows how 
whiskey maddens and destroys them. 

"The divorce evil, another custom our civilization 
has given them, is also becoming very common. It is 
no unusual thing now for Indians to get divorces through 
our courts. Still, let it be said to their credit, it is not 
yet so common with them as it is with us, and it is al- 
most unknown among the older full-bloods/ ' 

An elder from Indian Presbytery, speaking at the 
General Assembly, said that when the Indians were 
taken from the East and placed in Oklahoma is the only 
time on record that an Indian ever beat an American 
in a land trade. But many of our Indians are now in 
danger of losing their last home through the dishonest 
dealings of unscrupulous white men. Is it any wonder 
that long ago Wendell Phillips said, "The Indian race 
is the one which the people of the United States have 
most dread to meet at the judgment bar of Almighty God." 



Chapter III — Continued. 

PAYING A DEBT 
Section II. — Negroes 



One out of every ten people in the continental United 
States is a Negro. The present Negro population is 
between ten and eleven million, more than double 
that of 1865. 

In 1916 thirteen Southern States reported Negro 
populations of more than 200,000. In eight of them 
the number exceeded 600,000. These thirteen states 
contained six- sevenths of the Negro population of the 
country. 

Five out of every eleven Negroes in the United States 
are church members. In 1916 according to the best 
information Negro church organizations had 37,773 
church edifices and 3,618 parsonages. 

The usual type of building and equipment of the 
average Negro country church consists of an unpainted 
frame structure, with rough benches, a platform and 
pulpit for the preacher. Preaching services are held 
about once or twice a month. 

The minister is usually non-resident, often living 
and working at some other occupation in a nearby 
city. He usually comes to the community Saturday 
night or Sunday morning, and leaves at the close of. 
his Sunday labors. 

Here is a call for Home Mission Boards to send 
trained men to these neglected people. 

Former Ambassador Bryce once said that the Amer- 
ican Negro in the first thirty years of his liberation 
made a greater advance than was ever made by the 
Anglo-Saxon in a similar period of years. 

— American Survey. 



III. — Continued. 

PA YING A DEBT 

II. Negroes 

There is another debt the Church frankly acknowl- 
edged at the very beginning of its organization. Rising 
above the awful prejudices of the times and ignoring 
the cruel disappointments and losses of the war, the 
Assembly of 1865 addressed the following exhortation 
to the Churches: 

"The General Assembly solemnly admonishes our 
ministers, churches and peoples, and do enjoin upon 
them not in any wise to intermit their labors for the re- 
ligious instruction of the colored people of our land. 
While the change in their legal and domestic relations 
does not release the Church from its obligations to seek 
their moral and spiritual welfare, their helpless condi- 
tion and their greater exposure to temptation, leading 
to vice, irreligion and ruin, both temporal and eternal, 
which result from that change, make the strongest ap- 
peal to our supplying them with the saving ordinances 
of the gospel." 

The 4,000,000 Negroes in the United States when this 
deliverance was made have increased to 10,463,013. 
The conditions that the Church fathers foresaw and so 
clearly set forth in the Assembly's exhortation, have 
come to pass. That resolution accurately describes the 
Negro's present needs and the Church's most urgent 
duty. Because that admonition of the Assembly was 
not fully obeyed, the evangelization of the Negro is an 



70 UNFINISHED TASKS 

undertaking that demands a greatly enlarged effort on 
the part of the Church today. Of the total Negro pop- 
ulation in the United States about eighty- five per cent 
live in the South, and fifteen per cent are in the North 
and West. From 1910 to 1920 almost one-half million 
colored people moved from the Southern States, in- 
creasing the Negro population of the North about fifty 
per cent. They have largely settled in the cities, and 
the largest numbers in cities where a few years ago the 
Negro population was relatively very small. In ten 
years the Negro population of St. Louis increased sixty 
per cent, Omaha one hundred and thirty- three per cent, 
Chicago one hundred and fifty per cent, Youngstown 
two hundred and forty per cent, Cleveland three hundred 
per cent, Detroit six hundred per cent, and Gary thir- 
teen hundred per cent. Natural segregation has oc- 
curred with the result that they constitute Negro cities 
within cities. The Harlem section of New York City 
in numbers, in wealth and life has become the largest 
purely Negro metropolis not only of America but of the 
world. 

"The Negro faces serious problems when he migrates 
from his southern surroundings to a northern neighbor- 
hood. He enjoys larger liberty but pays an excessive 
rent, to raise which he must crowd his rooms with pro- 
miscuous lodgers, a danger to health and an impairment 
to family life. 

" Northern migration brings problems for both the 
Negro and his white neighbors, but the odds are against 
the Negro. Keener competition, racial animosity and 
unfair discrimination are in the scale against him." * 



*American Survey. 



PAYING A DEBT 71 

While the great majority of the Negroes doubtless 
will continue to live in the South, and be peculiarly a 
Southern missionary responsibility, the people of other 
sections must have more than a detached interest in 
them. Since the people of the North have had an op- 
portunity to study the Negro at close range the two sec- 
tions are getting on speaking terms when the Negro is 
the subject of discussion. There is every reason to be- 
lieve that we are coming more and more into an atmos- 
phere of reason and moderation in regard to the Negroes 
and what the whites should do for them and expect from 
them. It is not the purpose of this brief study to discuss 
the various phases of the Negro problem, but to consider 
the many needs of these people and our duty to them 
from the standpoint of Christianity. There are two 
sides to the Negro question — their side and our side — 
and our side is the more important of the two. 

In its service for the colored people the Southern Pres- 
byterian Church has organized its work along the fol- 
lowing lines of effort : 

Stillman Institute for Training Workers. A 
clean, upright and efficient leadership is primary in the 
moral improvement of any race. Christianity without 
education means to the Negro little more than heathen 
superstition. Many Negro ministers and teachers have 
had no preparation and are not qualified either by intel- 
lectual training or moral character to be spiritual leaders 
and interpreters of God's Word or teachers of the youth. 

(a) Boys' School. To meet the need for a capable 
colored ministry, the General Assembly in 1876 founded 
what is known as Stillman Institute, at Tuscaloosa, Ala- 
bama. Since its organization this school has sent per- 
haps one hundred colored ministers into our own w r ork, 



72 UNFINISHED TASKS 

in the home and foreign fields, and into the work of other 
denominations. Negro boys over seventeen years of age 
of good character are given a thorough normal course, 
including teacher-training, farming, dairying, and other 
industries, leading to a special course for those who wish 
to become ministers and missionaries. In the theological 
department a three-year course is provided, covering the 
English branches offered in a theological seminary. The 
teachers are white men who teach by precept and exam- 
ple. All students are required to work in the shop or 
on the farm twenty-one hours per week, in part payment 
of their expenses. Wherever the graduates of Stillman 
Institute have gone, it is the universal testimony that 
they have the confidence and respect of both races, and 
are an influence for good in their communities. 

(b) Girls 1 School. This is a new departure in our work 
for colored people. The Church has long felt the need 
of a school for girls, and such a school has long been the 
desire of our colored ministers. "No race rises higher 
than its womanhood/' Of no people is this truer than 
of the colored people of the South. If this race is to be 
elevated and purified, the home is the foundation on 
which this progress must rest. The mother determines 
the character of the home. The Church cannot render 
its full service to any race by means of the pulpit alone. 
If the immense task of Christianizing the colored race is 
to be accomplished, the number of Christian women must 
be multiplied. They are needed to teach the lessons of 
purity and honesty in the colored public schools. 
Trained nurses are needed to give instruction in the laws 
of health and sanitation. There must be workers for 
the congested Negro settlements of our cities, to teach 
right living and respect for the law. Missionaries are 



PAYING A DEBT 73 

needed to po into the country districts and establish Sun- 
day-schools. It is the purpose of this school to give a 
practical Christian industrial training to colored Pres- 
byterian girls who wish to go out to found Christian 
homes, and be Christian teachers and leaders of their 
race. 

Supporting Colored Pastors and Churches. 
There are in the Southern Presbyterian Church thirty- 
eight colored ministers who serve fifty-nine churches and 
missions. These churches are organized into four Pres- 
byteries which compose the Snedecor Memorial Synod. 
This Synod sustains the same relation to the General 
Assembly as the other Synods. Its Presbyteries are 
represented in the General Assembly on the same foot- 
ing as the white Presbyteries. The .Home Mission Com- 
mittee aids in the support of the pastors, and assists 
in the building of their churches and manses. These 
Presbyteries conduct their own affairs, develop their own 
leadership, and participate in all the work of the General 
Assembly. Our colored churches are few in number and 
usually have a small membership, but every colored 
Presbyterian pastor stands for a clean home life, rever- 
ence for God, respect for law and order, and contributes 
to the friendly relations between the races. It is ad- 
mitted by all that a Presbyterian Negro is the highest 
type of a Christian Negro. 

Promoting Colored Sunday-schools Taught by 
White Teachers. This is one of the largest fields of 
service before the white people of the South. In almost 
every community there are Negro children growing up 
in idleness, ignorance and sin, who can be gathered to- 
gether on Sunday afternoons for religious training. 
There is no record of the number of churches that have 



74 



UNFINISHED TASKS 



accepted this missionary opportunity, but it should be 
regarded as a part of the Sunday-school responsibility 
of every white church where there is need for this service. 
There is no record of a single instance where an effort 
to establish such a Sunday-school has failed on account 
of a lack of interest among the Negroes. 

Institutional Churches and Missions. In three 
southern cities there are well established missions that 
are ministering to the spiritual, physical and material 
welfare of the colored people. These missions demon- 
strate what can be accomplished for the Negroes by 
capable and conscientious leaders. 




READY FOR SUNDAY SCHOOL 



PAYING A DEBT 75 

(a) Presbyterian Colored Missions, Louisville, Kentucky. 
This is the largest and most important work that is being 
done for Negroes in any southern city. It is the pioneer 
in this needy field, and has pointed the way for similar 
Christian enterprises in other places. The work began 
in a small Negro Sunday-school conducted by Rev. John 
Little and his associates, while students in the Ken- 
tucky Theological Seminary. Mr. Little has been super- 
intendent of this wwk since its beginning. The story 
of this mission from the founding in 1898 is an inspiring 
record of Christian achievement. It is the story of a 
man with vision, purpose and unfailing devotion to duty. 
One possessing less faith and determination could not 
have succeeded in face of the discouragements and dis- 
appointments, and the indifference of the churches in 
the early days. 

The following brief description of the many-sided ac- 
tivities of these missions is condensed from a report of 
Rev. John Little, superintendent: 

"The Presbyterian Colored Missions are two insti- 
tutional churches with their doors open every day in the 
year trying to put into practice the gospel that is 
preached on the Sabbath. The religious services run 
straight through the year; the industrial classes vary 
according to the season. The idea in the minds of the 
workers is to help all who enter the doors to be better 
men, women and children when they go out than when 
they came in. 

"The activities include religious instruction, sewing, 
crocheting, embroidery, cooking, canning, shoe repair- 
ing, chair caning, and simple wood work. Each morn- 
ing of the three hundred and sixty-five days in the year 
new problems are presented to the workers by the 1,500 
different people who enter the doors to attend classes 
which meet on fixed days and fixed hours. 



76 UNFINISHED TASKS 

"The six theological students who founded the relig- 
ious instruction of the Presbyterian Colored Mission 
twenty-three years ago with twenty-three pupils, would 
be surprised to see the two Sunday-schools with eight 
hundred and forty-two pupils in charge of fifty-four 
white men and women representing many of the evan- 
gelical churches in the city. For a number of years five 
religious services have been held each Sunday — one 
preaching service in the morning, two preaching ser- 
vices in the evening, and two Sunday-schools in the after- 
noon. Out of these Sunday-schools has grown a well 
organized colored church with a consecrated minister, 
Rev. W. H. Sheppard, as its pastor, eighteen devoted 
officers and two hundred and twenty-seven members. 
The people in this congregation are regular in their at- 
tendance, reverent in their worship, generous in their 
offerings, cordial to strangers, and deeply interested in 
the evangelization of the world. 

"Each day in the week from October until June, a 
class in sewing can be seen in operation. It is hard for 
one to realize when he steps into the room and sees one 
of the eleven classes and knows that there are three hun- 
dred and fifty-one girls and women who receive instruc- 
tion, that this sewing work had its beginning with one 
teacher, six girls, and twenty-five cents in material. 
The sewing school has a regular system of training, lead- 
ing from the basting stitch to the completed dress. 

"Under the direction of one of the former pupils, who 
has had the advantages of courses at Hampton and Tus- 
kegee, each week there are classes in cooking. The girls 
are taught to prepare wholesome food, and are given 
many additional lessons that they would not ordinarily 
secure. In the summer months, at both mission sta- 
tions, canning clubs are conducted. 

"Under the direction of a graduate of Tuskegee, two 
nights each week a group of boys gather for training in 
shoe repairing. Many an old shoe has been made to 
revive its usefulness at an astonishingly low price. The 
boys not only repair their own shoes, but the various 





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78 UNFINISHED TASKS 

members of the family and of the Sunday-school and 
church patronize the shop. In this, as in all other in- 
dustrial classes, whoever enjoys its privileges pays for 
the cost of the material used. 

"The Daily Vacation Bible School has been incorpo- 
rated as a regular part of the annual program. In 
July, after the public schools are closed, the church doors 
are open each morning for the Daily Vacation Bible 
School. Thirty minutes are devoted to religious instruc- 
tion; thirty minutes to learning good music; and an hour 
and a half to some form of industrial work different 
from that taught in the winter months. The girls cro- 
chet and embroider; the boys cane chairs, do simple 
wood work, bind books, and make hammocks. 

"The workers have a feeling of satisfaction that an 
increased number of pupils are wearing clothes that they 
made ; that many of their shoes have been repaired ; that 
more wholesome food is served in numbers of homes; 
that many who were sick have been brought under the 
care of skilled nurses, physicians and surgeons; that an 
increasing number are daily planning their lives in con- 
formity with the teachings of Jesus Christ." 

(b) The Seventeenth Street Mission, Richmond, Vir- 
ginia. This mission is located in the heart of the worst 
slum district in the city. It was begun by some students 
in Union Theological Seminary, who started the first 
Sunday-school by literally going out into the highways 
and compelling some negro children to come in. This 
nucleus has expanded into a thriving, graded Sunday- 
school, with more than three hundred scholars and a fine 
corps of teachers in every department. A splendid 
brick building, costing $19,000 has been provided for 
the mission by the Presbyterian League of Richmond. 

The scope of this mission includes a club for boys, a 
girls' club, and a sewing school with three teachers. 
There is a Christian Endeavor meeting and a preaching 



PAYING A DEBT 79 

service every Sunday night. The mission is having a 
marked influence for good in the community. The busi- 
ness men in the district attest the vast improvement in 
the social life and morality of both the children and the 
older people. The mission is given credit for breaking 
up one of the worst gangs of boys in Richmond, and has 
abolished a great deal of mischief that formerly gave the 
Juvenile Court much to do. 

A striking illustration of the influence of the mission 
in the lives of the Negro boys recently occurred. Three 
boys were brought into the court charged with stealing 
clothes. The two older boys promptly denied their 
guilt, and placed it upon the youngest. The little fel- 
low in reply to the Judge's question as to whether he 
had taken the clothes, said, u No sir, before God I 
didn't take no clothes. " The Judge called his attention 
to the fact that he had used the name of God, and asked 
him what he knew about God. Immediately he an- 
swered: "God is Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchange- 
able in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, good- 
ness and truth. " The Judge, in surprise, asked where 
he had learned that; and he answered, "At the Seven- 
teenth Street Mission. Investigation proved him to be 
innocent of the charge. 

(c) Presbyterian Colored Missions, Atlanta, Georgia. 
This work has two centers, located in the midst of large 
Negro settlements. The work had its beginning in a 
colored Sunday-school taught by white teachers. In 
1918 following the practical example of the Louisville 
Colored Mission, and with the inspiration and help of 
Rev. John Little, the Presbyterian Colored Mission of 
Atlanta was organized along institutional lines, with a 
full time superintendent and a corps of volunteer workers 



80 UNFINISHED TASKS 

« 
from the Atlanta churches. Rev. G. F. Campbell, who 
had worked in the Richmond Mission while a student 
in the Seminary and later assisted with the Louisville 
Mission, was placed in charge. 

There are now two missions with a weekly attendance 
in the various departments of nearly one thousand. The 
activities of the Missions touch almost every phase of 
the communities' life. There are two Sunday-schools 
taught by white teachers. There are two kindergartens 
superintended by a colored girl who has been especially 
trained for the work. A full time teacher is employed 
for the sewing school, in which there are now three 
hundred pupils enrolled; a regular system of training 
has been adopted and the pupils are taught various 
stitches, and are taken step by step through six classes 
until they are able to make their own clothing and cloth- 
ing for others. There are two day nurseries where the 
children may be left while the mothers are at work. The 
boys have been organized into clubs, which hold weekly 
meetings, when the leader gives practical talks on rever- 
ence, honesty, health, cleanliness, thrift, patriotism, and 
other helpful topics. The girls are organized into a club 
for helpful service. The mission supplies food and 
clothing for the needy; physicians and medicines are se- 
cured for the sick. Through this work hundreds of lives 
are being touched every day, and the whole communi- 
ties are gradually being transformed. 

These Christian industrial missions represent a prac- 
tical effort of the Church to improve the educational, 
moral and physical condition of the colored people. It 
is possible for similar missions to be established in every 
Southern city. The white churches will always provide 
the support if they are shown the opportunity, and in 



PAYING A DEBT 



81 



every congregation consecrated teachers can be found 
for this Christ-like service. Such work manifests the 
Christian interest of the white people and wins the confi- 
dence and good-will of the Negroes. The gospel is 
preached to thousands who would not be reached in any 
other way, and the Negro problem is being solved with 
the spirit and teaching of Jesus Christ. 

Conferences for Colored Leaders. There is held 
at Stillman Institute each year a series of conferences 
which are designed to help the leaders of the colored peo- 
ple in their Christian life and better equip them for ser- 
vice in their churches and in their communities. 
Through these conferences the spirit and ideals of Still- 
man are being carried into many communities where we 
have no colored Presbyterian churches. 

(a) Preachers' Conference. This conference is held at 
the time of the meeting of the Snedecor Memorial Synod 
and in connection with the closing exercises of Stillman 
Institute. All the members of the Synod are brought 




"ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE. 



82 UNFINISHED TASKS 

together for ten days of inspiration, Bible study, and 
conference on their church problems. A helpful pro- 
gram is arranged by the Stillman faculty. Addresses 
are delivered by our leading white pastors on Bible 
themes, evangelism, Home and Foreign Missions, Sun- 
day-school methods and church work. The value 
of this conference to our colored pastors cannot be esti- 
mated. Not only does it afford them an opportunity 
for Christian fellowship and instruction by outstanding 
white and colored leaders, but they are encouraged to 
take part in all discussions. The benefit is seen in their 
increased efficiency as preachers and in the larger de- 
velopment of their churches. They are becoming better 
informed on the work of the Assembly, and are made to 
feel that they are an integral part of the Presbyterian 
Church, having a share in all its activities. 

(b) Teachers' Conference. A six weeks Summer School 
for teachers of Negro rural schools is held in June and 
July. Many of these teachers have had no preparation 
for their work. It is estimated that one-half or more of 
the 30,000 Negro school teachers and professors are un- 
prepared for their task. From seventy-five to one hun- 
dred teachers from Alabama attend. The State Board 
of Education recognizes the work done at Stillman, and 
co-operates with the Institute in furnishing teachers and 
lecturers on rural and community problems. The pur- 
pose of this school is to make better teachers and fit 
them to be leaders of their people. The results are seen 
in better homes, more Christian family life, and higher 
ideals of personal character. The Bible is given just as 
prominent a place in the summer school as in the regular 
session. Through this conference the Institute is touch- 



PAYING A DEBT 83 

ing thousands of Negro children and youth in hundreds 
of communities throughout the State. 

(c) Woman's Conference. This conference is a part 
of the program of the Woman's Auxiliary for the Ne- 
groes, and is conducted each year by Mrs. W. C. Wins- 
borough Superintendent. The conference is open to rep- 
resentatives from all churches. The delegates are col- 
ored women who have been carefully selected and are 
sent by an Auxiliary in the town in which they live. The 
program of the conference is arranged to give the greatest 
help to these women in their home life and church work. 
It not only includes Bible study, addresses on missions 
and Christian living, but competent instructors give 
practical courses in sanitation, nursing, care of children, 
sewing, cooking, community service, and other every- 
day problems. There is no part of the Church's work 
for the Negro people that has so far-reaching an in- 
fluence for good. These women are recognized leaders 
in their churches and communities. This helpful ser- 
vice is creating a spirit of confidence and trust and is 
helping to break down the barrier between the two races. 
That this is true is revealed in this remark of one of the 
delegates: 'T have often wondered if any one really 
felt interested in or sympathized with the colored wo- 
man. I have found here a Christian spirit that I have 
never found before." 

Inter-racial Go-operation. In all its work for col- 
ored people — evangelistic, educational, industrial — the 
Church is striving for better men and women. Booker 
T. Washington once said, "I cannot hold a man in the 
gutter without staying in the gutter myself." The two 
races by divine providence are indissolubly linked to- 
gether. All along the way, and at every turn they can 



84 UNFINISHED TASKS 

help or hurt one another. Radical leaders of both races 
can cause friction through prejudice and misunder- 
standing; but the vast majority of Negroes look to Chris- 
tian white people for justice and fair play. Principal 
Moton of Tuskegee, recently said that "the better white 
South was never more friendly to the Negro than today/ ' 
This is only another way of saying that in the principles 
of Jesus is the solution of the Negro problem. The 
Church, the possessor of the gospel of human brother- 
hood, is given the supreme responsibility for increasing 
the spirit of helpfulness between the races. 

"One of the greatest menaces to American life is law- 
lessness as expressed in riots, mobs, lynching. This has 
borne most heavily upon the Negro population because 
it has been least protected and respected. During the 
past thirty years 691 white men, 11 white women, 2,472 
colored men and 50 colored women, have been lynched 
without trial. Nearly three-fourths of the Negro men 
and about 90 per cent of the white men were not even 
charged with any crimes against women."* 

The Southern Inter-racial Commission, an organiza- 
tion of Southern white men, has for its objective the 
cultivation of better feelings between the races. All 
over the South there should be representative meetings 
of white and colored leaders to remove misunderstand- 
ings and promote inter-racial justice and good- will. The 
principles of the Inter-racial Commission have twice 
received the endorsement of the General Assembly, and 
all our pastors and people have been urged to bring the 
spirit of Christ to bear in al Jtheir dealings with the col- 
ored people. To help the Negroes is to help ourselves. 
Race distinctions must not become race discriminations. 



'American Survey 



PAYING A DEBT 85 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What three obligations constitute our debt to the Indian? 

2. To what extent has the Christian Church failed in meeting 

its obligation to the Indian? 

3. How do conditions among the Indians to-day challenge Ameri- 

can Christianity? 

4. In what way does the meeting of Indian Presbytery differ 

from other Presbyteries? 

5. What Indian work has the Southern Presbyterian Church? 

6. What was Wendell Phillip's striking statement? 

7. What statistics prove that the Negro is primarily a Southern 

responsibility? 

8. What two sides to the Negro question are mentioned? 

9. How far has the Church met the obligation assumed by the 

first General Assembly? 

10. What must be done if the immense task of Christianizing the 

colored race is to be accomplished? 

11. What four types of work for Negroes are being conducted by 

the Southern Presbyterian Church? 

12. What is the testimony of the South's leading Negro as to racial 

relations to-day? 



CHAPTER IV. 
THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 



The main features of the mountain problem are iso- 
lation, illiteracy and arrested development. Housing 
and living conditions are not good and result in the 
wide- spread prevalence of disease. There are few schools 
and churches, little knowledge of what goes on in the 
outside world. 

Travel from place to place is today the great problem 
among the mountaineers. This upland region is with- 
out seacoast, inland lake, navigable river, or canal, 
and for two hundred miles north and south there is 
no railroad. One writer has aptly said : "Of mountain 
travel, no true description is favorable, and no favor- 
able description can be true." 

This vast region of the South is slowly but surely 
coming to be recognized as one of the interesting fea- 
tures of America. Speculators are finding it to be a 
resourceful field for investment for future lumber 
camps and coal mines. Geologists are busy seeking 
out valuable ores, and are planning for further research. 
Antiquarians in studying the similarities of the High- 
landers of the South with the Scotch Highlanders of 
two centuries ago, find unceasing features of interest. 
The hackling of flax, the spinning wheel, the hand 
loom, the water mill, the whip-saw, the cross-bow, the 
flambeaux lamp, the patterns of the homespun "bed 
kivers," the snatches of the cradle songs, the "lining 
out" of the native hymns, and even the mother's 
threat of punishment of an unruly child, "Be good, 
or Claverhouse will catch you," all point back to an- 
cient times in the land of their forefathers. 

— The Southern Highlanders. 



IV. 

THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 

There is not to be found on this continent a people 
whose condition is more appealing in its pathetic need, 
or who are more deserving of the Church's interest and 
help, than the thousands of American highlanders living 
at our own doors in the Southern Appalachian Moun- 
tains. No people are more responsive to the gospel, 
more appreciative of the school, and at the same time 
more capable of intellectual and spiritual development. 

Much has been written about their indolence, igno- 
rance and poverty, but it is not always remembered that 
their condition is the result of isolation on the one hand 
and of neglect on the other. Well-nigh impassable 
mountain ranges have shut them off from contact with 
the world and its progress, and for generations the 
Church has neglected them in the barrenness of their 
life. It is difficult to say who is more to blame, those 
who have neglected or those who have been neglected. 
Wherever the responsibility, it does seem strange that 
conditions should be as they are in the old sections of 
our country "so near to Jerusalem of so many denomi- 
nations." Possibly that is the very reason. Nearness 
is always the severest test of missionary zeal. 

Territorial Unity. The region occupied by these 
people is the mountain portions of Kentucky, Tennes- 
see, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia 
and West Virginia. It is a section about six hundred 
miles long and about two hundred miles wide, and con- 
tains an area of more than 100,000 square miles. The 



90 UNFINISHED TASKS 

mountain ends of these seven states constitute a great 
inland empire, twice as large as New York. It would 
cover all of New England, New Jersey, Delaware and 
two Marylands, and it is much larger than England, 
Wales and Scotland together. This vast inland empire 
contains a population between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 
people, who are one in geographical and social interests. 

The fact that this great region is intersected by state 
lines not only destroys the impression of its vastness and 
unity, but in a large measure accounts for the backward- 
ness of the people. It may be necessary for every house- 
hold to have its back yard, but it is a great disadvantage 
to the mountains that they have had to furnish back- 
yards for seven states. The fact is that the mountain 
sections have largely been cut off from participation in 
the affairs of the State in which they are a part. Con- 
sequently they have not developed along with the rest 
of the country. 

It is an interesting fact that in 1861 because of this 
geographical oneness, and following the example of West 
Virginia which seceded from Virginia, it was seriously 
proposed to form the mountain ends of these states into 
an independent commonwealth, to be known as the State 
of Appalachia. If this had been done, it would have 
been the means of taking millions of the best people of 
the nation out of the back yard and putting them in the 
way of development and progress. 

Synod of Appalachia. It is the territorial unity 
and similarity of interest of the mountain Presbyteries 
that lie back of the great mountain Synod of Appalachia. 
This great Home Mission Synod embraces almost the 
same territory as the proposed State of Appalachia. 
The mountain sections of the Church, just as in the case 



92 UNFINISHED TASKS 

of the states, received scant attention from the Synods to 
which they belonged. There was a disposition to look 
upon the mountain Presbyteries as dependent mission- 
ary territory, rather than an integral part of the Synod. 
They had little voice in the councils of the Church. The 
formation of these Presbyteries, with their common in- 
terests and common problems, into a separate Synod has 
lifted the mountain sections of the Church out of the 
back yard and has given them a Church-wide promi- 
nence. The churches of the mountain Presbyteries 
having the same educational and religious needs are able 
to develop their own resources, train their own leaders, 
build their own educational institutions and colleges, 
and carry out the program of service best adapted to 
their needs. 

Origin of the Mountaineer. They are the de- 
scendants of the best people who came to America in 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They came 
from the same Scotch-Irish Presbyterians that settled 
the valleys and the lowlands and who pressed into the 
mountains and settled there. At first, they w^ere just 
as cultured and as well-to-do as any of the people of the 
valleys or seaboard, from among whom they moved, and 
at the same time more resolute and virile and daring. 
They have not always been illiterate. Dr. S. T. Wilson 
says that: "In 1776, out of one hundred and ten pio- 
neers of the Washington District in Tennessee who signed 
a petition to be annexed to North Carolina only two / 
signed by mark. In 1780, two hundred and fifty-six 
pioneers of Cumberland signed the articles of agreement 
and only one signed by mark." 

They are a patriotic and liberty-loving people. Rev. 
John E. White, in "The Home Mission Task," says: 



THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 93 

"There are three claimants to priority for the Declar- 
ation of Independence. The mountaineers of East Ten- 
nessee and Southwest Virginia have their declaration 
of Abingdon alongside the claims of Mecklenburg and 
Philadelphia. They contributed to the struggle for in- 
dependence the twofold service of holding back the 
hordes of Indians incited by British agents rushing down 
upon the plains, and at the same time they sent flying 
columns to the assistance of the embattled colonists. 
No fact is better established in history than the fact that 
the battle of King's Mountain was the turning point of 
the American Revolution. 'That glorious victory,' said 
Jefferson, 'was the glorious annunciation of that turn 
in the tide of success which terminated the Revolution- 
ary War with the seal of independence.' It was a bat- 
tle mainly of mountaineers, under Shelby and Sevier, 
who turned immediately back again to drive the Indians 
beyond the Blue Ridge. They represented probably 
the bravest and most adventurous elements in the im- 
migration which settled the Colonies. They simply 
w^ent a little further than their brothers into the perils 
of the new land." 

In all the wars in which the nation has been engaged 
the southern highlanders have responded with a larger 
percentage of their population than any other part of 
the United States. East Tennessee is said to have given 
a larger percentage of its adult male population to the 
Union Army during the Civil War than any other sec- 
tion of the entire country. 

Carter County, Tennessee, sent a larger percentage 
of its population to the Cuban War than any other part 
of the entire nation. In the World War, the mountains 
of the South sent a stream of volunteers into the army, 
leading all other sections of the country. Breathitt 
County, Kentucky, headed the list by sending twice 
as many men in proportion to its population as any 



94 UNFINISHED TASKS 

county in the United States. Cowardice or a want of 
patriotism can never be laid to the charge of the moun- 
tain people. 

Two Classes of Mountaineers. It would not be 
correct to consider all the people residing in the moun- 
tains as objects of missionary effort. A well-informed 
student of the mountain people, who is himself a moun- 
taineer, has pointed out the fact that "what may be true 
of one mountaineer, or of one mountain home, or of one 
mountain community, is not necessarily true of all 
mountaineers, homes and communities. There are to 
be found in the mountains, as everywhere else, those 
social and moral classifications which people naturally 
fall into according to their differences of birth, breeding 
and opportunity. . . . There are the lines of moral, 
mental and material cleavage as sharply drawn in the 
mountains as anywhere else in this democratic country/ ' 

The population of this vast mountain region is divided 
into two distinct classes, as far removed in character 
and environment as it is possible for people to be. First, 
there are those who live in the fertile valleys along the 
rivers and the railways, with the very best religious and 
educational advantages, and who are equal in intelli- 
gence and refinement to any people in America. Such 
cities as Chattanooga, Knoxville, Johnson City, Bristol, 
and Asheville, with their splendid churches, colleges and 
universities, are the achievements of mountaineers of 
this class. 

But the people with whom the missionary has to do, 
and with whom this study is concerned, do not live in 
these favored valleys, but far back from the main lines 
of travel in small clearings by the small water courses, 
almost entirely removed from the outside world, with 



THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 



95 



few advantages for learning and few opportunities for 
improvement. The extreme poor live "back of beyond," 
beyond the towering mountains, locked in narrow coves, 
without teachers, without physicians, without comforts 
and conveniences, and without any contact with outside 
civilization. 

Fruits of Isolation. Why should a people with such 
ancestry and such acknowledged character and ability 
be objects of missionary service? There is one answer — 
they are the product of their environment. Mountains 
make mountaineers. Isolation fosters ignorance. For 
generations they have lived to themselves. When the 
tide of progress set in from the lowlands and the countries 
across the sea, it flowed North and South, and the re- 
mote mountain communities, unpierced by the lines of 
travel and commerce, became eddies in the on-going 
stream. In the march of progress this section was 
passed by and forgotten, and for ages was lost to the 
busy world. Poverty of the soil resulted in poverty of 




GROUP OF MOUNTAIN CHILDREN 



96 UNFINISHED TASKS 

the people. This in turn deprived them of the advan- 
tages of church and school, and the uplifting conserving 
influences of education and the Christian faith. 

Dr. J. E. White, in "The Home Mission Task," cites 
the Huguenots, who were driven in 1572 into the Vosges 
Mountains, as an illustration of the deteriorating effect 
of isolation upon a noble people: 

' 'There in the little district of Steinthal a community 
of them lived for one hundred and fifty years without 
contact of any sort with the outer world. The teachers 
and preachers who came with them died. Gradually 
it came to pass that they had no teachers and preachers. 
Schools worthy of the name, churches, family altars, the 
influence of religious sentiment and life, were all depre- 
ciated. When John Frederick Oberlin, the Strasburg 
professor and missionary hero, found them they were 
in a pitiable condition. Their numbers had increased, 
but the type of the brave Huguenot who was their an- 
cestor was unrecognizable in them. This is an extreme 
illustration of what isolation carried to its logical con- 
clusion will work in human character." 

While it is true that the people of the southern moun- 
tains were never entirely isolated, many of them have 
lived apart in their own secluded communities, separated 
from the influence of the progressive movements of an 
advancing civilization. Long distances and impassable 
roads discouraged frequent communication and friendly 
intercourse with other communities. The effect of these 
conditions operating from generation to generation re- 
sulted in the general ignorance and deterioration of the 
people. Thus a distinct class was formed and a race 
naturally mentally strong and with many noble traits 
of character became poorer and more ignorant and 
more exclusive. 



THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 97 

The Present Conditions. While the character of 
the homes vary according to the circumstances of the 
owner, as a rule the houses in the coves and recesses of 
the mountains are poor and bare — a log cabin of one or 
two rooms, windowless or having rude wooden shutters, 
with an outside chimney built of stone from the sides of 
the mountain or nearby brooks. The furniture is a 
rough table, a few chairs and a shuck mattress. In 
many sections cook stoves, or other labor-saving devices 
are unknown. In these cramped quarters live the entire 
family. Yet withal they are unusually hospitable. A 
stranger is welcomed and is given the best they have. 
The men as a class love their families, and divorces 
among them are unknown. The life of the woman is 
hard, and they grow prematurely old, through toil and 
drudgery. Dr. Guerrant says: 

" It is not hard to persuade them that God has a better 
country for them. It is a continual struggle for bread. 
The steep mountain sides are soon worn to the rock, and 
it is a battle with ground hogs and ground squirrels from 
the time the seed is planted to the day the crop is gath- 
ered." 

The schools are like the homes. The State has made 
little or no provision for public schools. Where they have 
them they are open only for a few months, and are 
taught by incompetent teachers. In many cases they 
can do little more than read and write. One little girl 
before entering a mission school said she had attended 
five schools, and she had never learned her letters. 
Another said she had gone to three schools, and added, 
"I never larned nuthin' at ary one of them." 

The churches reflect the conditions of the home and 
the school. Yet the mountain people are naturally re- 



98 UNFINISHED TASKS 

Hgious. It is said that there is not an atheist or an infi- 
del among them. For one hundred and fifty years one 
generation has taught the succeeding one to believe in 
one true God and to have faith in the Bible. During 
the early days the ministers who labored among them 
laid the foundation of their faith in God and the Scrip- 
tures. They established log churches and schoolhouses, 
and kept the fire burning on many a family altar; but 
with the later generations, because of their lack of an 
educated ministry and the consequent ignorance, many 
corrupt ideas have entered their belief. The sermons 
they most enjoy are lengthy discussions of doctrinal 
subjects. They will walk for miles for the privilege of 
hearing a sermon, and will sit for hours on the rudest 
benches. An educated missionary once preached, by 
invitation, in one of the log churches. His sermon was 
thirty minutes long. At the close, a native preacher 
asked: "Be yer edicated?" "Yes/' said the missionary, 
"I am educated." "Fer how long did yer go ter school?" 
asked the preacher. "Well," answered the missionary, 
"I went four years to college and three years to the the- 
ological seminary." Responded the preacher, "Yer 
don't tell! An, after all that schoolin', ye kin preach 
but half an hour. Why, any of us home preachers kin 
preach two hours without goin' ter school at all." 

They are intensely Protestant as were their ancestors. 
Catholicism can make no headway among these descend- 
ants of those who were taught the creed of Knox and 
Calvin. But Mormonism has found its way into the 
mountains, and for years its missionaries have been 
searching the remote recesses for followers of its faith. 
A great spiritual hunger is characteristic of them all, 
and a desire to learn and rise. "It is too late for me," 



THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 99 

was the pathetic cry of an old man, "but I want you to 
learn my boys and girls." 
Discoverer of the Mountains. It was Dr. E. 0. 

Guerrant who directed the attention of the Church to 
this great mission field and the possibility of winning a 
great people for Christ and the Kingdom of God. Dr. 
W. W. Moore, President of the Union Theological Semi- 
nary, Richmond, Virginia, in the introduction to "The 
Galax Gatherers," says: 

"As Sir Walter Scott made the Highlands of Scotland 
known to the world and turned an endless stream of 
tourists through those romantic regions, so Dr. Guer- 
rant has helped to give to the world a true knowledge 
of this vastly greater and wilder Appalachian region with 
its four million of untutored and un-Christianized peo- 
ple, and has done more than any living man to turn a 
saving stream of evangelists and teachers into its remote 
and needy recesses. He has been in turn soldier, doctor, 
evangelist — these three — but the greatest of these is 
evangelist. His heart has responded to the sore need 
of this vast region, as large as the German Empire, and 
practically without churches, Sabbath-schools, or qual- 
ified teachers. He has recognized clearly that this home 
mission work is the paramount obligation resting upon 

our people Notwithstanding all that has been 

done, the field is yet almost untouched; there are many 
thousands yet unreached; and as Dr. Guerrant says: 'the 
question is not whether they can be saved without the 
gospel, but whether we can be saved if we do not give 
it to them." 

Organized Mission Effort. The story of Mountain 
Missions of the Southern Presbyterian Church is largely 
the story of Dr. E. O. Guerrant. It was to meet the 
educational and religious needs of these millions lost in 
the mountains, passed by and forgotten by the Church, 



100 UNFINISHED TASKS 

that the Society of the Soul Winners was organized. 
The following account of the beginning of this work has 
been given by Dr. Frank Talmadge: 

"Many years ago a soldier in Morgan's Confederate 
Army rode over the mountains of the South. There 
for the first time he came in touch with the misery and 
ignorance and nobility of the mighty Highlanders. After 
the war was closed this brave soldier of war entered a 
theological seminary and became a soldier of the Cross. 
Called to one of the chief pulpits of Louisville, he felt 
that barrack duty was not the place of honor. He longed 
for the picket line. He wanted to fight at the front, as 
he did in Morgan's brigade. Called to be a Synodical 
missionary, at once he accepted the appointment. 

"As the Synodical missionary his thoughts immediate- 
ly turned to the place of the greatest want and wretched- 
ness, to the Highlanders of the mountains. He orga- 
nized church after church. He sent missionary after 
missionary into the hills. Then the Synod met and 
began to count its money. Little money was there. 
Then the officers of that Synod ordered this missionary 
to retrench and not to build so many churches and 
schools, as they could not afford to pay for them. Then 
a wonderful thing happened; wonderful because it was 
so simple in a man of great faith. 

"Dr. Guerrant resigned as the Synodical missionary. 
Before the Synod he uttered these words: 'Brethren, if 
you cannot afford to pay for the schools and churches 
and the missionaries for the poor Highlanders, God can 
pay for them.' Dr. Guerrant went back to his home in 
Wilmore, Kentucky. There he knelt and asked God 
to help. The money commenced to pour in. Church after 
church has been established. School after school has 
been built. Missionary after missionary has been sent 
to these fields. The orphan children were gathered into 
a home. Though wonders have been accomplished by 
this man*of prayer, yet only the outer edge of the har- 
vest has been gathered." 



THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 101 

Presbyterian Work. In 1911, Dr. Guerrant, on ac- 
count of advancing age, transferred to the General As- 
sembly the work of the Soul Winners' Society, consist- 
ing of fifty missionaries and eighteen mission centers. 
The Assembly accepted the responsibility, and made the 
Mountain Missions a department of the work of the 
Executive Committee of Home Missions. Dr. Guerrant 
continued his interest and help in the work until his 
death. Under the care of the Home Mission Commit- 
tee the work has been greatly enlarged, and has become 
in many respects the most fruitful of any department 
of the Church's missionary operations. 

There are in the bounds of the Assembly about fifty 
mountain mission schools under the control of the Pres- 
bytery, Synod and Assembly. Under the immediate 
supervision of the Executive Committee of Home Mis- 
sions there are (Report 1921) fifteen schools and thirty 
mission centers, from which are being reached forty- 
seven Sunday-schools and seventy-seven out stations 
and preaching points. The Committee employs in the 
Mountain Department sixteen ministers, nine laymen, 
and seventy-three women missionaries and teachers. 
Financial assistance is also given to the mountain work 
of the Presbyteries and Synods. These schools vary 
one from another in size, in emphasis and in course of 
study, but never in purpose, for the development of 
Christian character and Christian leadership is the aim 
of all. 

People of the Ozarks. In the Ozark Mountains, cov- 
ering large portions of Missouri and Arkansas, are about 
one million of the same people, living under the same con- 
ditions, having the same problems, brought about by 
the same causes as in the mountains of the East. In the 



102 UNFINISHED TASKS 

rush to settle the great plains and prairies of the West, 
the Ozarks were passed by as were the Alleghanies, the 
Blue Ridge and the Cumberlands. Harold Bell Wright 
has discovered these people and introduced them to the 
nation in "The Shepherd of the Hills," and other stories 
of this region, as John Fox, Jr., has acquainted us with 
the people of the mountains of Kentucky. 

At Hollister, the Synod of Missouri has the School of 
the Ozarks. This splendid institution is the pride of 
the Synod, and is doing a remarkable work for the boys 
and girls in that great mountain region. In Arkansas 
the Assembly's Committee, in co-operation with the 
Synod, has two mountain mission schools, one at Moun- 
taincrest, and the other at Womble. These two new 
enterprises represent the beginning of the Assembly's 
program of education in the Ozarks. 

Combating Illiteracy. The first great need of these 
people is education. The school must blaze the way 
and create the necessity for a better religious and com- 
munity life. The mountain people cannot be elevated 
from without; but the improvement must come from 
within. The State schools are not meeting the educa- 
tional needs of the people, and the Church through its 
system of mission schools is endeavoring to help solve 
the problem of illiteracy, not by supplanting, but by 
supplementing the work of the public school. The 
mountain people want the church school, and will give 
freely of their limited means towards its support. These 
schools in themselves cannot touch the fringe of the need. 
One boy or one girl from a family may be privileged to 
attend, but what of the eight or teabrothers and sisters 
shut off at home without any opportunity? These are 
the Church's chief concern, and it is the desire to help 



THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 



103 



them that lies back of its mission school effort. By 
training Christian leaders and Christian teachers, the 
Church is making it possible for a greater number to 
receive an education, many of whom otherwise would 
have no chance to do so. 

The story of one school is the story of all. In almost 
every instance they are crowded to overflowing, and their 
usefulness is limited only by their lack of room. The 
outstanding, insistent appeal of every mountain teacher 
is for larger buildings and better equipment to care for 
the army of boys and girls seeking admission. The chil- 
dren in the city and other more favored communities 
may regard it as a hardship to go to school and look upon 
it as a punishment, but the mountain children are so 
eager for an education that many of them will make any 
sacrifice to get it. Two small girls walked thirty-five 
miles to enter a mission school, and when the session 
closed they walked back home. Two others drove one 




FOR SUCH AS THESE 



104 UNFINISHED TASKS 

hundred and twenty miles across the intervening moun. 
tains in a covered wagon, and were four days on the road- 
Another came twenty miles leading a pet cow with which 
to help pay her expenses. 

It is the aim of these mission schools to give each boy 
and girl the best possible instruction in the class room, 
teach them lessons in health, sanitation and home-mak- 
ing, and lead them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. 
The Bible is a text-book in every school, and is taught 
in each grade. When the students have finished in the 
school they are sent back to their homes in the remote 
creeks and coves to help their families and communities 
to higher and better things. This is the work that is 
being done by the Church in those splendid mountain 
mission institutions at Stuart Robinson, Highland and 
Beecrrwood, in Kentucky; Grundy and Blue Ridge, in 
Virginia; Madison, in West Virginia; Banner Elk and 
Plumtree, in North Carolina; The Ozarks, in Missouri; 
Mountaincrest and Womble, in Arkansas; Nacoochee, in 
Georgia; and at scores of smaller schools throughout 
the mountain regions. 

There is no part of the Church's missionary operations 
that pays larger dividends in Christian character and 
potential leadership than the consecrated service of 
these Mountain Mission teachers. Through their ef- 
forts the younger generation is learning Christ's new 
commandment, "Love one another." The old spirit 
of hatred and revenge that has so long prevailed among 
families and clans is dying out except in districts that 
have not been reached by prohibition and the Christian 
school. 

Sunday-school and Community Workers. In 
addition to the teachers in the day and high schools, all 



THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 105 

of whom teach in the neighborhood Sunday-schools and 
visit in the homes of the people, the Committee employs 
a number of community workers who give their entire 
time to Sunday-school and other religious and commun- 
ity service. Sunday-schools are held in the churches, 
school houses and the teachers' homes, where the chil- 
dren are gathered, or as many as can find room. Every 
teacher's home is a community center. Through the 
children the workers reach the parents. There is scarce- 
ly an hour in the day, and frequently in the night, that 
there is not some call for the service of the missionary. 
Every community worker must be ready for any emer- 
gency, whether it is sickness in a family, a funeral, or a 
wedding. In the remote regions "back of beyond," 
where doctors and nurses are practically unknown, she 
must be ready to prescribe for all ailments of man or 
beast, and must be able to render "last aid" as w^ell as 
"first aid." Every mountain missionary should have a 
stock of home remedies, and an unusual supply of com- 
mon sense, to work among a people who have so little 
knowledge of sanitation, or the simplest treatment in 
the case of sickness. 

Epidemics always bring terror to the hearts of the 
mountain workers. The people are so helpless and so 
dependent. One woman worker, in the absence of any 
physician and nurse, visited one hundred and ninety- 
eight cases of influenza. She served day and night and 
administered the approved remedies of which she had 
heard and which alone were available. Her good com- 
mon sense and tireless fidelity were blessed to such a 
degree that but one patient died. Such service has its 
reward in the love and confidence of the people. Many 



106 UNFINISHED TASKS 

out of their poverty try to show their gratitude in some 
kindness done. 

One missionary heard of a family in great need. She 
walked three miles, through mud and in the rain, to a 
log cabin on the side of the hill. There was only one bed- 
room. In that room was the mother ill with influenza 
and pneumonia, and the father and four children were 
all in bed. The missionary cared for the entire family, 
day and night, until her strength failed and she was 
obliged to return to the mission to rest. In a short time 
she returned to her nursing. When all were well on the 
road to recovery, she went elsewhere to administer to 
others. The man of the house did not say "thank you" 
when she left. A week later, hearing that the mission- 
ary was sick, the man, still weak from his recent illness, 
walked three miles through snow and over frozen streams 
to bring a ham and two chickens to her. This was his 
expression of gratitude to one who had been a friend in 
time of need. 

Free Medical Clinics. Following the example of 
Dr. E. O. Guerrant, who frequently took physicians 
and surgeons to various places in the mountains for 
the benefit of those without physicians and hospitals 
and who were unable to procure proper medical as- 
sistance, his son, Dr. E. P. Guerrant, a competent 
physician and surgeon, accompanied by specialists and 
nurses who give without charge their time and service, 
holds each year free medical clinics at three of our largest 
schools, and devotes several days to treating mountain 
children and others suffering from chronic diseases. At 
each of these clinics from one hundred and fifty to four 
hundred patients are examined. The announcement 
that a clinic is to be held is carried far and wide. There 



THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 107 

is a stream of sick and suffering humanity from twenty- 
five to thirty-five miles back in the mountains to receive 
treatment. It is like in the days when Christ was on 
earth, when "they brought unto Him all the sick people 
and those that were taken with divers diseases." At one 
clinic a primitive Baptist preacher came twenty-five 
miles from back in the mountains with his wife and five 
children. Tonsils were removed from four of the chil- 
dren and adenoids from one. 

Mountain Hospitals. Hospitals are one of the great 
needs of the Church's Mountain Mission work, for no 
people in this great country of ours are more destitute 
of medical advantages. At Lees-McRae Institute, Ban- 
ner Elk, North Carolina, there is a splendidly equipped 
hospital, with competent nurses and a skilled physician 
in charge. In this mission hospital more than three 
hundred patients have been treated, from one to six 
weeks, and most of them for operations. Hundreds of 
others have been treated without having to remain. It 
is more than a hospital. It is both a dispensary and a 
school. Here the students in the Institute are instructed 
in things pertaining to their own health and safety and 
the care of the sick room. Twenty-five trained nurses 
have gone out from this school. 

At Highland School, Guerrant, Kentucky, the Com- 
mittee has a hospital with a trained nurse in charge, but 
there is no resident physician to care for the teachers 
and the pupils or minister to the sick in the community. 
Hospital facilities must be provided at Stuart Robinson 
and other centers in this great and needy field. Where 
could a Christian physician, wishing to minister to the 
relief of suffering humanity, find a more open field or 
more inviting opportunity? 



108 UNFINISHED TASKS 

Evangelistic Effort. Every mountain school, com- 
munity center and hospital is intended to be an evange- 
listic agency. Every minister, teacher, and nurse is 
striving to make Christ known in His saving power to 
the people among whom they labor. The Mountain 
Mission Sunday-schools supported by the Executive 
Committee have an enrollment of 4,000; and the workers 
receive into the Church an average of 600 per year upon 
profession of their faith. In one mountain field in Vir- 
ginia, one missionary in seven years has built six 
churches. These are in a county where previously 
there was not a Presbyterian church. The evangelistic 
opportunity in the mountain Presbyteries is practically 
unlimited. Mothers often come to the workers from 
communities ten to fifteen miles distant, asking that a 
Sunday-school be started for them, saying: "We don't 
know nuthin' and we want our children to larn." 

Consecration of Missionaries. Without a single 
exception the mountain missionaries are willing to spend 
and be spent in these hard and difficult fields. Many 
have declined larger salaries in other work, that they 
might serve these needy people. 

Few of the homes in which these missionaries live have 
even the suggestion of comforts or conveniences. The 
houses in many instances were built of green lumber 
which, when dried, left great cracks through which the 
winter winds- drive the rain and snow, in spite of the 
many pastings of newspapers which were sent in mis- 
sionary barrels. One worker tells how she pulled the 
bedspread over her head when it snowed and in the morn- 
ing before rising she shook the snow off her bed. Is it 
any wonder that this same woman now walks on crutches 
much of the time because of rheumatism? Often water 



THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 109 

is carried from a distant neighbor's house, or from a 
spring at the foot of the hill. The coal has to be carried 
in and the kindling split because there is no man on the 
place. In addition to her duties as Christian worker 
and servant of the community, she does all the heavy 
household work. One worker has had to move six times 
in three years, and is now living in a donated house with 
the possibility of having to vacate at any time. It is 
located on the side of a hill, difficult of approach, with 
no conveniences, and could properly be designated as a 
* 'woman-killer." Oftentimes a missionary lives alone, 
with never a congenial friend from the outside world with 
whom to talk. Even the mail is irregular in its arrival. 
The post-office may be at the foot of the mountain, or 
it may be three miles away, or it may be seven or ten 
miles. As of Paul it can be said of them, ''In labors 
more abundant," "in weariness and painfulness, in 
watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often." 
If there is any special honor for the soldiers who can go 
out farthest, stand longest, fight bravest in the hard 
places of the battle, it should go to the Home missionary. 
The Church should see to it that these heroic men and 
women have at least the ordinary comforts of home 
where they can rest after a day in which their strength 
has been given in sacrificial service. 

Fruits of Mountain Missions. Rev. E. V. Tad- 
lock, principal of the Stuart Robinson School, Blackey, 
Kentucky, says: 

"Instances of the fruitfulness of mountain missions 
in the state where I labor, can be cited that are so numer- 
ous and striking as to be conclusive. I recently spoke 
in one of our fields to a mountain congregation of more 
than two hundred. The pastor, himself a mountain 



110 UNFINISHED TASKS 

man, was the product of the mission church and school. 
Within six months he has received into the membership 
upward of one hundred mountain people, and with the 
help of an assistant is rapidly developing five or six out- 
lying stations. Recently three hundred were present 
at Sunday-school. 

''The Synodical evangelist in the same state is also a 
product of the mountain mission work. This is his 
story as he told it. 'If you had been looking for me 
twenty-five years ago, you would have found me in the 
office of my brother, then sheriff of the county, with a 
bottle of whiskey in my pocket, a 45 calibre revolver 
buckled about my waist, and a deck of cards spread out 
on the table in front of me. If you had spoken to me 
about religion, I would probably have cursed you." 

"Leading the campaign for the endowment of one of 
the great schools of America is another product of South- 
ern Presbyterian mountain missions, one of the most 
virile and eloquent men who has ever gone out of the 
mountains. He recently returned to his old home to 
throw himself into a political campaign to encompass 
the defeat of a man who was financially and morally 
bankrupting his county. 

"In the same state, a brilliant young mountain man 
has been made vice-president of the great mission school 
of another branch of the Presbyterian Church. He was 
called from the seminary to the pastorate of the largest 
church of his denomination in the capital city, but de- 
clined it in order to give his life to his own people. Sub- 
sequent calls of the most flattering character have been 
refused. 

"Mountain missions have also given to the state some 
of its most honored and useful citizens. In one city 
alone the banker who is regarded the leading financial 
authority, the men who compose the largest firm in an 
important line of business, and the pastor holding the 
pulpit of one of the first churches, are all mountain men, 
the products of mountain missions. 

"It is, however, in the mountains themselves that the 



THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 



111 



great impact of mountain missions is being felt. Go to 
those communities where missions and schools have been 
well supported and wisely managed and you will find 
happy and cultured homes, thriving churches, and God's 
glorious grace manifested in innumerable ways. 

"Through misunderstanding of the mountain people 
and the problems of missions in their behalf, many sad 
and foolish blunders have been committed. Now, that 
the pioneering has been done, the problem is to find the 
right workers and the adequate means to support them. 
When properly conducted, mountain missions give con- 
tinuous and heartening returns for the labor and money 
invested." 

Recruiting Ground of the Church. The mountain 
schools can be made the Church's most fruitful recruit- 
ing ground for workers, for both the Home and Foreign 
fields. It has been said: 

"In the cities ninety per cent of all that the children 
see tells them of man. In the mountains ninety-six per 




CHRISTIAN RECRUITS 



112 UNFINISHED TASKS 

cent of all that they see tells them of God. Nearly all 
our young men who are called of God into the gospel 
ministry are country reared. In the mountains the rural 
influences that lead youth to hear the voice of God 
reach their strongest expression/ ' 

A people that has never failed to send forth volunteers 
at the country's call, will respond when the call of a needy 
world is presented to them. The life of a mountain boy 
or girl is a struggle against difficulties. When they are 
given a vision of the world's needs and are challenged 
by the command of Christ to become soldiers of the 
Cross, they will answer the call to the Church's most 
difficult fields in larger numbers than will the youth of 
any other part of our land. 

Changes in the Mountains. In many mountain 
sections there is a new day with new conditions. The 
discovery that the hills are covered with timber and un- 
derlaid with coal, is sending industry and railroads into 
the most inaccessible nooks and corners. Valleys that 
once held a single cabin, or two at most, are now crammed 
with miners' huts. Boys from the mountain homes are 
earning more in a single week than their fathers earned 
in a year. A people that have lived apart for one hun- 
dred and fifty years are turned unprepared to meet the 
mental and moral strain of modern civilization. This 
emphasizes the great need of the mountain people for 
the guidance of the Christian school and the steadying 
influence of the Christian Church. 

The immediate question for the Church is, shall these 
people be left to the exploitations of those who covet 
their rich lumber and ores, or shall they be protected 
and helped and saved to bless the nation and the world ? 
In the language of another, "We have built light towers 



THE STRENGTH OF THE HILLS 113 

at a few centers which cast their beams immediately 
about them, but the land lying hugely between is not 
lighted. . . . We have scarcely touched the deeper and 
darker sections — the great interior stretches of life on 
the ranges where the pathos of backwardness in the blind 
strength of the mountaineer's child is waiting for us." 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What are the main features of the mountain problem? 

2. What is the severest test of missionary zeal? 

3. Who discovered the mountains to the Southern Presbyterian 

Church? 

4. Why was the Synod of Appalachia organized? 

5. Who were the antecedents of the mountain people? 

6. What are the fruits of isolation? 

7. Is there a distinction between illiteracy and ignorance? 

8. What are the reasons for mountain mission schools? Why 

are hospitals needed? 

9. Give instances to prove that mountain missions pay. 

10. Why can mountain missions be made the recruiting ground 

for the Church? 

11. Does the industrial exploitation of the mountains lessen or 

complicate the Home Mission task? 

12. Considering the self-denying service of the Church's mountain 

missionaries, do they receive the appreciation and support 
they deserve? 



CHAPTER V. 
OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 



Our present foreign-born population is about 17,- 
500,000 and there are some 20,000,000 more of immed- 
iate foreign extraction. 

Approximately one-fourth of all the children in the 
United States live in the homes of the foreign- born 
as the birth rate is everywhere higher among foreign- 
born than among the native stock. 

The percentage of foreign- born farmers is greater 
than that of the native-born in a number of our States. 

Some of the biggest foreign cities in the world are 
to be found in America. 

The foreign language press in America includes some 
1,500 publications with a circulation of 8,000,000 copies 
and with a reading public of possibly 16,000,000. 

There are about 4,000,000 Italians living in America. 
They have 212 newspapers, with a combined circulation 
of over 1,000,000 copies. 

About 3,000,000 Poles who were born under Austrian, 
German or Russian rule now live in the United States. 
They have 100 newspapers in this country with a cir- 
culation of 1,500,000. 

Four hundred thousand Greeks live in the United 
States, and they have 26 newspapers, one of them being 
the largest Greek paper published in the world. 

To be a great nation does not mean to be of one blood, 
but it must be of one mind. Unity of spirit is of more 
importance than unity of race. 

— American Survey. 



V. 

OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 

Home Mission work among the non-English-speaking 
peoples has the two-fold aim of making Christians and 
citizens. It seeks to win them as disciples of Jesus 
Christ and make them worthy citizens of the common- 
wealth in which they live. No immigrant can be an 
American in spirit without the Christian ideals of the 
American founders and builders. The Home Mission 
purpose is to Americanize these new citizens by evan- 
gelizing them. 

''The term 'foreigner' is obsolete in America. With 
war mingling the blood of several nations in the same 
red stream, the term 'allies' has become the fitting appel- 
lation for those sons of other lands who love the truth 
and fight for the right. The immigrant is now thought 
of as our future citizen. As such he must be given the 
opportunity afforded our own sons. Our dream of 
Christian democracy must be his. Will he catch it? 
The patient teachings of its ideals will give him the back- 
ground for making it his own. The practical applica- 
tion of its principles in dealing with him will help him 
to possess it. His failure or success depends on us."* 

The Enormity of the Task. The magnitude and 
importance of this missionary undertaking appears in 
the fact that since 1820, the beginning of the record of 
immigration by our Government, 33,200,103 foreigners 
have arrived. According to the last census, there are 
about 17,500,000 foreign-born persons living in the 



*Christian Democracy for America. 



118 UNFINISHED TASKS 

United States, and 17,500,000 children of foreign-born 
parentage — which means that about one-third of the 
entire population is less than one generation removed 
from their ancestral homes. 

Present events indicate that the tide of immigration 
will rise higher than at any time in the century of immi- 
gration which has just closed. It is the opinion of some 
students of the question that unless there is legislative 
restriction, the term ' 'immigration' ' will no longer be 
descriptive of the incoming multitudes, but the word 
"migration" will have to be used. Whole peoples or 
sections of peoples are waiting to be transferred to the 
United States. They are being drawn here by our free 
institutions and the opportunity of life, liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness, and the desire to escape the priva- 
tions and poverty following the great war, together with 
the crushing burden of taxation. In fact, America may 
be likened to Egypt in the days of Joseph: "All coun- 
tries came into Egypt for to buy corn, because that the 
famine was so sore in all lands." Europe is hungry and 
crowded. America has room and plenty. Hence the 
attractive power of the United States to the millions 
in poverty and want and lacking opportunity for im- 
provement. 

"America bears in her forehead the magnetic pole of 
the world. Towards it the compass of every ship on 
all the seas is set. The Statue of Liberty Enlightening 
the World, in the harbor of New York, waves her torch 
of light to the wanderers of every land, while her bronze 
lips seem to shout a welcome to every kind of prodigal 
who has wasted his substance — if he ever had any — in 
the riotous poverty of some far country. Gathered from 
all nations of Europe, like the tributaries of a mighty 
stream, they become united and centralized here only 



OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 119 

to diverge again sooner or later, across the nation or, in 
a few cases, to return to their native land to die. 

"From every throne of Europe, where for ages men 
have gilded, kissed or cursed their hereditary bondage, 
come these heterogeneous millions, attracted by two 
words — liberty and money. They represent a despot- 
ism which has held its foot upon the necks of men until 
seemingly every vestige of manhood is trodden out. 
They are men upon whose lives are written ignorance, 
bigotry and the foulest passions of the human heart — 
but they are men. Others have caught a breath of free- 
dom and with unwisdom construe it into license, and 
shame to the nation and its manhood is written upon 
fadeless records. Others still, breaking the fetters of 
old-world bondage, with clear eyes and hearts of hope, 
offer to the State a man and womanhood to which the 
noblest civilization might give a hearty welcome."* 

A World Ministry. In the light of this immigrant 
tide, the statement so frequently heard, that "As goes 
America, so goes the world," is not merely a rhetorical 
phrase, but a truth that each day becomes increasingly 
evident. America's world influence comes not so much 
from what we are doing abroad, as from what we are 
doing at home. Not only does America touch the world 
through education, commerce and diplomacy, but she 
has opened wide her gates to as many as will come, 
thereby touching and uplifting Europe, Asia, Africa and 
the islands of the sea, through the representatives from 
these distant lands that have come to live within her 
spacious borders. It is through immigration that the 
peculiar relation of America to the world is seen. And 
among the many great tasks confronting American 
Christianity there is none that is more important or 



*Rev. Fred H. Allen, "The Problem of the City." 



120 



UNFINISHED TASKS 



that is so far-reaching in its power for good or evil as it 
is accepted or neglected, as the opportunity presented 
by the presence of so many million foreign-speaking 
peoples. Dr. R. S. Storrs has said, 'The future of the 
whole world is pivoted on the question of whether the 
Protestant churches of America can hold, enlighten and 
purify the great numbers born or gathered within our 
borders." 

Greatest Mission Field. 

"The greatest foreign mission land on the globe today 
is our own America. Here we do not go in search of the 
the millions; the millions come to us. We are not com- 
pelled to learn their language; they are eager to learn 
ours. We are not obliged to conform to alien customs; 
they are here to adopt ours. We are not a little group 
engulfed in hundreds of millions of alien faith; we are 




NEW AMERICANS ARRIVING 



OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 121 

the majority. Our faith is ingrained in the very fiber 
of the government, established in the customs of the 
land. These strangers from all the shores of the world 
are here cut loose from their native governments and 
religious customs. A hiatus between the old and the 
new exists in both their political and religious thinking. 
That hiatus, that pause in thought, is the open door for 
the entrance of new and better things. We are not com- 
pelled to uproot and displace old-established beliefs. 
That process is already begun by the very fact of their 
migration. They are in the pioneering, adventurous 
mood. They expect new experiences, different condi- 
tions. This is the great open world field for the Church. 
While she need not neglect her foreign markets, she must 
not forget that the markets of the world are pressing to 
her doors, asking for her wares. 

"In stable, office, mill and shop these millions are 
here — Americans in the making. We are providentially 
appointed masters to bring them on into the rights and 
privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. The teach- 
er in her crowded school, surrounded by a polyglot 
throng of restless, ill-kempt, jabbering children, may 
lose heart and seem to herself to be engaged in a fruitless 
struggle, a losing fight; but with patience, brave heart, 
and love — out of that throng will come teachers, artists, 
singers, writers, inventors, financiers, statesmen and 
substantial business men. What mission school ever 
established in foreign field can compare with this in 
present opportunity and range of possibility? The same 
is true of all our efforts at religious instruction. 



M * 



Influence of Environment. In the early days 
when the immigration was from the North and West of 
Europe and w r as made up in large part of English, Irish, 
Scotch, German and Scandinavian, a representative of 
the Church met the immigrant and his family at the 



*American Missionary Society. 



122 UNFINISHED TASKS 

port of entry. He was protected against exploitation, 
and was helped to locate where there was opportunity 
to have a home and get ahead. Churches were founded 
and they were given ministers who could speak their 
tongue. They speedily became American in spirit as 
well as in name, and constitute the great strength of the 
nation of which they are a part. 

Today the immigrants are from the South and East 
of Europe. They come from countries where the Bible 
is largely a closed book. Many of them bring a super- 
stitious faith and hatred of the Church they know, and 
a suspicion or hatred of the government they have ex- 
perienced. The Church does not meet them at the port, 
and they are not protected against the exploitation of 
thieves and robbers. Instead of settling in those sec- 
tions where they could find a home and become a help- 
ful part of the community, they are permitted to herd 
in groups by themselves with the result that there are 
foreign cities and foreign towns in the heart of America, 
which are as alien in thought and feeling and as difficult 
to reach with the gospel as they would be in the lands 
from which they came. 

Thirty-three of our largest cities are more foreign than 
American. New York City is both an illustration and a 
prophecy of what other great centers will become. Its 
increase in population during the past twenty years in 
Russians, Italians, Austrio-Hungarians, was greater in 
each case than the native population. 

"New York is no longer an American city. It is the 
largest Irish city in the world. It is the largest Hebrew 
city in the world, having a Jewish population fifteen 
times as large as the Jewish population of Jerusalem, 
and ten times as large as the Jewish population of all 



OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 123 

Palestine. There are only two nations that as nations 
have a Hebrew population equal to that of New York. 
It has more Germans than any German city except Ber- 
lin, there being more residents of the city with German 
parents than with American parents. It has a larger 
Italian population than any city in Italy except Naples 
and Rome."* 

Some one has pointed out that New York is owned by 
the Jews, ruled by the Irish, and rented to the Americans. 

Responsibility of the Church. It is not always easy 
to make good Christians and good Americans of people 
who live under the best conditions, in the best surround- 
ings, but the task is made increasingly difficult when the 
surroundings are bad. Three-fourths of the immigrants 
live in cities in crow T ded tenements, or in huts and shacks 
in the mining regions and industrial centers. They see 
little of the true America, and do not come in contact 
with the best Christian people. Possessing fine churches 
of our own, we have endeavored to serve them, if at all, in 
old unused grocery stores and dilapidated buildings on 
the side streets. Gates of wickedness— unlike anything 
known to their simple life in the homeland — open to 
them on every turn. This is the idea of Protestant 
Christianity and American democracy that many re- 
ceive. 

The Church cannot dismiss these people on the plea 
that it is impossible to make good Christian Americans 
out of ignorant degraded foreigners. That they are 
ignorant is not their fault; that they are degraded may 
be ours. The fact is, the great majority wish to become 
good Americans and want to be taught the way. They 
were drawn here by their desire for freedom. Exper- 



c The City and the Kingdom. 



124 UNFINISHED TASKS 

ience proves that many of them are just as open to the 
gospel and capable of fine Christian character and fine 
Americanism as were our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, if 
given the same chance. If they sell their votes it is 
because they are following the example of others, and 
some American patriot is buying them. Call the roll 
of the nation's foremost citizens, the leaders in every 
department of our country's life — religious, educational, 
commercial, political, financial — and find how many were 
born in homes of poverty and want beyond the sea whose 
coming here was in response to a desire for the higher 
privileges of American education and citizenship! Why 
should we look down upon these people, and think of 
them as a menace, when with the proper instruction and 
guidance they are capable of so much. 

The Future American. Our nation is too young, 
and the elements entering into its life too many and di- 
verse, for America to have developed a distinctive phy- 
sical type. But it will come. God works slowly, but 
He works none the less surely. Ruskin reminds us that 
out of an unlovely handful of common dust, clay and 
soot, in the slow laboratory of the ages, God can build 
walls of sapphire and diamonds. 

We are all ready to admit the unequalled contribution 
made to the nation by the older immigration, to which 
the most of us trace our lineage. But the Slav, the 
Italian and the Jew now head the list of the immigrants. 
These races have been sending their sons and daughters 
to us by the hundreds of thousands. We have thought 
of them as inferior to ourselves. Bishop E. H. Hughes 
has brought together a list of conspicuous services ren- 
dered by these races which he thinks makes all mankind 
their debtor. 



OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 125 

"When we look up into the heavens we must remember 
that it was a Slav named Copernicus who, in the early 
days of the sixteenth century, long before Newton came 
with his discovery, gave us the theory of the sun and 
earth and skies that still bears his name. 

"When we go into the schoolroom we must remember 
that it was a Slav named Comenius who, losing all his 
property and writings by Romanish persecution, fled 
in the seventeenth century to Poland and became the 
greatest educational pioneer and reformer of his age, 
long anticipating Froebel and Horace Mann. 

"It was a Slav named Sobieski who, in 1683 overthrew 
the Turkish army in front of Hapsburg, and so became 
a mighty stay against the flood of Mohammedanism 
that pushed toward Europe and the West. 

"It was a Slav named Kosciusko who, coming in the 
impulse of freedom to aid our continental armies, planned 
the fortifications at Saratoga, and became chief engineer 
in constructing the fortifications at West Point. He was 
thanked by Congress and advanced to rank of Brigadier 
General. 

"It was another Slav, of noble family, named Pulaski, 
who volunteered in the American service against the 
British, and in the siege of Savannah poured out his life 
as a titled martyr to the principles of American democ- 
racy. 

"By many the Italian is classed with the undesirables. 
He has succeeded the Irishman as the digger of ditches 
and builder of roads. He has won the epithet of 'Dago.' 
But what have his ancestors done for the world that he 
should merit our respect? 

"Among other things, the Italians gave us the con- 
ception of law and government that entered, in such a 
marked way, into the moulding of our Christian faith; 
and those highways along which the feet of Paul and the 
early disciples went on their missionary journeys. 

"They gave us Raphael, del Sarto, Angelico, and a 
host of the world's greatest artists, reaching the human 
climax with Michael Angelo. 



126 UNFINISHED TASKS 

"They gave Galileo in astronomy, Dante and Virgil 
in literature, Mazzini and Garibaldi in patriotism, the 
Cabots in exploration, and Columbus for the discovery 
of our continent. 

"They gave Volta, who is memorialized by the word 
Volt;' Galvani, who is memorialized by the word 'gal- 
vanic;' and the discoverer of wireless telegraphy in Mar- 
coni.' ' 

Sympathy and Understanding Needed. Miss 

Myrtle Mae Haskin of the Ensley, Alabama, Italian 
Missions, gives the following illustrations out of many 
in her experience: 

"They are strangers in a strange land. Many times 
they have need of a friend, a real friend in this land 
where they have come to live. One Italian lad worked 
and saved enough to send for his mother. He had a 
tiny place rented and ready for her when she came. But 
she had been in America just fifteen days when they 
brought back her boy from the plant where he worked, 
mangled and dead. Everything in life for her was gone. 
Everything a blank. She awoke in a hospital where 
she could not understand a word said by the doctor and 
nurse. She could not eat the food. She had never seen 
anything like it before. With only a bitter memory 
for company she must pass the days away. Thus I 
found her. The doctor said there was nothing the mat- 
ter with her but a broken heart. She had nothing to 
live for and did not wish to live. They could do noth- 
ing but let her waste away. 

"Friendless and crushed with sorrow in a strange land, 
far from home and friends. There are many such in 
America." 

"One idea which they bring with them to America is 
that God is a great Judge watching to see when He can 
punish them. And this is why they each have their 
patron saint whom they honor and pray to. This saint 
is to act as their lawyer and argue their case with God, 



OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 127 

the great Judge. They never think of Him as a loving 
Father trying to help them in their struggles and want- 
ing them to win in Jesus' name and through His grace, 
But when they once get a heart knowledge of Jno. 3:16, 
they have a faith in their Father that often puts us to 
shame. Often they express their faith in ways which we 
cannot forget. 

"When Dominic Faglione prayed in the hospital for 
his wife's recovery, after she had been given up by all 
medical skill, he pleaded, 'God is love, He will let her 
stay with me and the two babies who need her so much.' 
He prayed until he got his answer and with shining eyes 
he said, 'Me no can say it just like you, but me feel it 
here,' and he put his hand over his heart. He had faith 
to believe it, and God did let her stay. 

"Get back of the why? and understand them. One 
volunteer helper said to me, T cannot understand Ar- 
nold and Caesar Bennecchio. They do not seem to be 
such bad boys, but I can't make them stop drawing 
their faces. They have done it so much that I believe 
they do it without knowing it now.' She was quite 
right, they did it unconsciously because their mother is 
a mute, and they were used to talking to her that way 
to make her understand. They did not do it to annoy 
the teacher. When I told her this, she said, 'I have had 
my lesson. Never again will I attempt to stop a thing 
and criticize until I get back of the why, and understand 
what causes it to exist.' 

"Let us also get back of the why and understand them, 
not criticize from the distance." 

Patriotism of These New Citizens. If possible the 
patriotism of many foreign-born is more intense than 
that of many native Americans. A great deal has been 
said about "hyphen-ates," "dual citizenship," and 'di- 
vided allegiance." There are some, but not all are like 
that. Liberty is sweet to men who have been in a dun- 



128 UNFINISHED TASKS 

geon. "They know the pit from which they were 
digged." 

"We talk about the immigrant as though he was not 
a part of us. Yet what a revelation comes from reading 
the casualty lists from the battlefront overseas! One- 
fourth of the arm-bearing power of our nation is foreign 
born. A morning newspaper picked up at random is 
evidence of the fact that we are all largely Americans 
by adoption. In the lists of killed and wounded we find 
officers and privates alike whose names read as follows : 
Shanoff, Winkler, Marosco, Nazzareno, Vaillancourt, 
Walczak, Papernick, Koskoka, Adamowyzc, Olgivie, 
Balicki, Neitzke, Helwig, Liddi, Haig, Svegan, Bekas, 
Gotschall, Pelarz, and the like. Why not recognize 
that in meeting the question of Christian democracy for 
the non-English-speaking people of the United States 
and those who will come later, we are solving our own 
problem? This query gains importance when we con- 
sider the way in which our entire industrial system is 
carried on by those we have unjustly called 'foreigners.' 

"Our guests are become more than alien visitors. They 
are of our own household, and patriotism is as fervent 
with them as it is with us. The great industries that 
made possible the speediest victory and termination of 
the war were manned largely, if not almost entirely, by 
men from other countries. How far the ofttimes de- 
spised immigrant has measured up to his task in increas- 
ing and improving output is a matter of common knowl- 
edge. His support of the Red Cross, his war savings, 
and his Liberty Loan subscriptions compare with the 
record of any other proud patriot of the oldest stock in 
America."* 

Perils of Neglect. While these foreign-born hold 
great possibilities for good, they also present great ele- 
ments of danger. Whether they are to become Christians 



s " Christian Democracy. " 



OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 129 

and patriots depend upon the efforts of the Church in 
their behalf. 

It is said that Trotzky 's companion in xA.merica was 
converted in a mission and that he is now a tireless Chris- 
tian worker, and a loyal, patriotic citizen. The night 
before Trotzky sailed for Russia, he gathered his fol- 
lowers together in a room in Eastside, New York, in 
what was intended to be a secret meeting, but which 
was attended by a secret service man, and said: "I 
want you to remain in this country and bring on one 
revolution after another, until you overturn this dirty, 
rotten American government, while I go to Russia and 
overturn that government and stop Russia's war against 
Germany." The difference between Trotzky, the Bol- 
shevist and assassin, and his converted friend, the pa- 
triot, is Christianity. 

Having wrought havoc in Russia, the Bolshevist agents 
are preaching their accursed doctrines in every part of 
the world. They are reaching out into India, and China, 
and into Africa, and into all of continental Europe. 
Thousands and tens of thousands are at work in Amer- 
ica. It is stated from Washington that 300,000 Bol- 
shevist agitators are stirring up strife and discord in this 
country. Americanization alone will not meet a situa- 
tion like this. It must be Christianization. The propa- 
ganda of the Bolshevists must be met by a campaign of 
evangelization, not only among: the foreigners, but among 
the Negroes, the Indians, the mountaineers, and the 
well-to-do, careless and indifferent Americans. Bolshe- 
vism will make no headway among people who believe 
in God and the Bible and who support the Church and 
its work. 



130 



UNFINISHED TASKS 



What the Church is Doing. The Southern Pres- 
byterian Church is making an earnest effort to reach the 
immigrant with the gospel. While the Church has al- 
ways felt a measure of responsibility for all needy classes 
in our midst, and individual congregations ministered 
to the few immigrants that chanced to be in their com- 
munities, the Immigrant Work of the Executive Com- 
mittee was started in 1910. Until this time the immi- 
grants had settled almost entirely in the North and 
East. With the development of the large industrial 
centers in the South, and the opening of the coal mines 
in the southern mountains, thousands were turned in 
this direction. The work has been enlarged as rapidly 
as the Committee has been able to find workers and pro- 
cure the equipment. The workers of the Assembly are 
now preaching the gospel among the Mexicans, in Texas; 
Cubans, in Florida; French, in Louisiana; Italians, in 
Birmingham, Alabama; New Orleans and Baton Rouge, 
Louisiana; and Kansas City, Missouri; Bohemians, in 
Virginia; Hungarians, in Louisiana and in the coal fields 




SYRIAN CHILDREN, ATLANTA MISSION 



OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 131 

of Virginia and West Virginia; Syrians, in Atlanta; 
Chinese, in New Orleans; Hebrews, in Baltimore. 

A few^ illustrations are given descriptive of the work 
and the results. In most cases these people are open 
and responsive, and generally appreciative of the service 
the Church seeks to render. 

Italian Mission, Kansas City, Missouri. This is 
the largest and best equipped Italian Mission of the 
Southern Presbyterian Church. It is owned and super- 
vised by the Central Presbyterian Church, and aided 
by the Assembly's Committee. This Mission is under 
the charge of Rev. J. B. Bisceglia, a finely educated and 
efficient minister of our Church, assisted by Mrs. Bis- 
ceglia, and a resident worker and kindergarten teacher. 
Some of the finest physicians, surgeons and specialists 
in the city conduct the clinics. The clubs for the boys 
and girls, the music and sewing classes, are served by 
volunteer workers from the churches in Kansas City. 
This mission with its varied activities is rapidly becom- 
ing one of the best of its kind in the country. It is 
proving its real worth and usefulness among the 10,000 
Italians in Kansas City. The mission publishes its own 
paper, The Italio-American Review. Through this 
monthly magazine the mission is rendering a large service 
in the evangelization and x^mericanization of the Ital- 
ians, not only in Kansas City, but throughout the 
United States. 

The following program of work is carried out week after 
week, thoughout the year, adding to it the Daily Va- 
cation Bible School in the summer and a number of 
entertainments from time to time. 

Sunday: Bible-school, Christian Endeavor, preaching 
service. 



m;&*'&fa*u 






Si 

'1 w •*• 






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jpt 



;«||l:i 



^ I. 






OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 133 

Monday: Kindergarten, three clinics — women's di- 
seases, surgery, general diseases; junior girls' club. 

Tuesday: Kindergarten; junior boys' club; library. 

Wednesday: Kindergarten; young Italians' music 
club; Americanization class. 

Thursday: Kindergarten; clinic — women's diseases; 
girls' club; prayer-meeting. 

Friday: Kindergarten; piano lessons; social evening. 

Saturday: Violin lessons; piano lessons; sewing school; 
boys' work; clinic — eye, ear, nose and throat. 

The following account of the mission and its work is 
given by Mr. Bisceglia, the minister in charge: 

"Ours is the only institution of its kind that ministers 
exclusively to the Italians, reaching in various ways dur- 
ing the year, at least 5,000 people. Most of the Italians 
here are from the southern part of Italy; seventy -five 
per cent come from the agricultural districts of Sicily, 
possessing therefore all the good and bad qualities, the 
advantages and disadvantages of the farmers transplanted 
at a rather mature age in a large industrial city where 
the climate, the language, the customs, the working con- 
ditions and the people are altogether different from what 
they have been accustomed to since their childhood. 

"The results so far have been very encouraging and 
the fruits fairly abundant. Our clinic, started about 
six or seven months ago, is well attended. During this 
time hundreds of cases have come to our clinic, a dozen 
of operations for tonsillitis have been performed at the 
Settlement House, a number of minor operations and 
several major operations were performed in the hospitals 
by our surgeons. During the small-pox epidemic hun- 
dreds of men, women and children were vaccinated by 
paying a small fee of thirty cents, which covered the 
expense of vaccine and dressing. The consensus of 
opinion among those connected with our work is that 
the clinic has been a marked success. 

"The kindergarten has an average attendance of fifty 



134 UNFINISHED TASKS 

in the summer time, and twenty-eight during the school 
year. The sewing school on Saturday afternoon is 
attended by over one hundred children. There are 
forty pupils in the music department. The Junior 
Boys' Club has a membership of thirty-five; the Girls' 
Club has a membership of fifty; and the Junior Girls' 
Club has a membership of thirty. The boys' work, on 
Saturday from 9:00 a. m. to 5 :00 p. m., has a very bright 
future ; in a few weeks we have enrolled more than fifty 
boys. The Sunday-school has an enrollment of one 
hundred and thirty-five, with an average attendance of 
over one hundred. The Christian Endeavor Society 
was organized the first week of this year and has an 
average attendance of thirty-five. Our church member- 
ship is now over one hundred, and the preaching ser- 
vices on Sunday evening and prayer-meeting on Thurs- 
day evenings are well attended. 

"One well-established fact in work for the Italians is 
that the parents bring their children to the mission, and 
not the children their parents. About two years ago 
two children, a boy of seven and a girl of eleven, came 
to our Sunday-school. They had been very regular in 
their attendance and always on time. During the Daily 
Vacation Bible School the boy learned all the memory 
verses and was therefore presented with a copy of the 
Bible. It w T as not long before the girl came to me and 
asked for a copy of the Bible in Italian for her father 
who had already read a great part of it in English, but 
he wished to read it in the mother tongue. I visited 
the man and found a great big strong fellow of about 
thirty-five, one of the most straight-forward men I have 
ever met in this whole community. When I gave him 
a copy of the New Testament he was so happy and so 
eager to read it — like a man who has been thirsty for 
a long, long time, and all at once discovers a fountain 
of clear, fresh water. He began to attend the services 
at the Mission. He read the Bible devoutly to his 
household and to his friends, and at the first communion 
service he was received on profession of faith in Christ, 



OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 135 

and at the following communion service he presented 
his two daughters to be admitted to membership. 

"The Roman Catholic priests in order to discredit the 
work among the Italians have sent broadcast a statement 
that though the Italians come to our meeting places, 
when it comes to 'sacred rites,' like baptism, marriage 
and burial, they humbly* return to the mother church. 
This is not true of our Mission. Every child born in a 
family identified with the Mission is baptized by the 
minister; every marriage contracted by one of the mem- 
bers of the Mission is performed by the minister, and 
every funeral is conducted by the minister. 

"During my pastorate several girls from our Mission 
have requested that their future husband identify him- 
self with the church before being united in matrimonv 
About three years ago a girl came to our Sunday-schoo! 
and later she brought her sister and brother. We called 
on her family, and they all came to our preaching ser- 
vice. We gradually gained the confidence of the girl 
and we learned that, the father being a strict Catholic, 
they had to go first to mass on Sunday morning before 
they could come to our Sunday-school. Gradually they 
received permission from the father to be absent from 
mass, but they were not allowed to join our church. 
About a year ago a young man from a distant state 
asked the father of the girl the privilege to become his 
son-in-law. After receiving her father's consent the 
first thing the girl thought of was to send the young 
man a copy of the Bible and inform him that she would 
be married by a minister. He came to Kansas City and 
became very much interested in our mission work. The 
father finally consented to the girl being received into 
the church; the young man followed her; and they were 
married in our Mission. They both began to work in 
our Sunday-school, and she taught in our Daily Vaca- 
tion Bible School. Being unable to find employment 
in Kansas city, he returned to his home town where his 
old position was waiting for him. They placed their 
letter at once in the American Presbyterian Church, and 



136 UNFINISHED TASKS 

have been very faithful and very active in the Masters 
work/' 

Cuban Mission, Tampa, Florida. In the cosmo- 
politan city of Tampa where thirty-five languages are 
spoken and sixty per cent of the population is foreign, 
there are 30,000 Spanish-speaking people. This colony 
is a section of Cuba transferred to the United States, 
bringing the Church face to face with the problems of 
Sabbath desecration, brutal sports, illiteracy, and 
corrupt religion. Cuba is our near neighbor. The 
people freely go and come between the two countries. 
The United States gave Cuba her political freedom and 
many other material blessings. She is looking to 
America for guidance in many things. She followed 
the United States into the world war on the side of the 
Allies by an immediate declaration of war upon Ger- 
many. 

There has been an attempt to define the sphere of in- 
fluence of the various denominations working among the 
Cubans in Tampa. Our Church has been given the re- 
sponsibility for a section covering sixty-four city blocks, 
with a population large enough to occupy our attention 
for years to come. A large majority of the Cubans have 
repudiated the dead formalism of the Roman Catholic 
Church. If Protestant Christianity does not claim them 
and offer them something better, they will drift into 
skepticism, infidelity and false beliefs of all sorts, as is 
always the case with a people who give up their tradi- 
tional faith. Our mission, under the direction of a splen- 
did Cuban pastor, is reaching a large number through 
the Sunday-school, Christian Endeavor, and the regular 
church services. The mission is gradually building up 



OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 137 

a protestant constituency that is making its influence 
felt throughout the Cuban colony. 

Bohemian Work. These people are from the new- 
nation of Czecho-Slovakia, of which Bohemia forms the 
larger part. The center of this mission is in Prince 
George County, Virginia, in East Hanover Presbytery. 
It was seriously interrupted during the war, when the 
pastor, Rev. J. A. Kohout, returned to the old world to 
do his part in the Allied Cause. During the absence of 
the pastor the work was carried on by an elder and his 
wife, and the little flock was held together. Services 
and Sabbath-schools are conducted at four points. This 
is a permanent settlement, the members being mostly 
farmers w T ho have procured their own homes. While 
the Czecho-Slovaks are nominally Catholic, a great 
number have broken absolutely with Catholicism, and 
have entered the evangelical churches, or become infi- 
dels and "Free Thinkers." Bohemian unbelievers are 
the most bitter enemies of the Church. They form so- 
cieties which declare their infidelity in their very consti- 
tution, and publish newspapers w-hich heap contempt 
upon Christianity. 

In estimating the w<orth of these people, we must not 
forget that one of their ancestors, named John Huss, a 
full century before Martin Luther started the Reforma- 
tion, was a martyr to the Protestant faith. 

This little Bohemian congregation, only a few years 
old, under the leadership of their devoted leaders, takes 
part in the Progressive Program, and contributes to 
every Church cause. It has given two religious workers 
to the Czecho-Slovaks in Russia, one young man, a 
Seminary graduate, is pastor of a Bohemian church in 
Ohio; two young women are doing missionary work 



138 UNFINISHED TASKS 

among their own nationality in Pennsylvania; one young 
woman is nursing in a hospital in Pittsburgh; two are 
teachers in the public schools. 

Hungarian Missions. In the coal fields of Virginia 
and West Virginia the majority of the foreigners are 
Hungarians. With Norton, Virginia, as a center, Rev. 
B. Csutoros conducts services at twelve points, and at 
these places he has more than two hundred members, in- 
cluding thirty elders. Mr. Csutoros grew up in the 
Reformed Church of Hungary, and is an honored mem- 
ber of Abingdon Presbytery. He is preacher, pastor, 
adviser of all the Hungarians of that section. He is 
greatly beloved by the people, and is highly esteemed by 
the coal operators, who aid in the work by providing 
preaching places and in other w r ays. 

In all the coal fields of these two States there are many 
Hungarian Protestants without any church privileges. 
In one community a large number signed a petition ask- 
ing for the organization of a Presbyterian church, but 
there was no minister to send. In one year a missionary 
from another field made several visits to this place, and 
baptized twenty-one children, and held communion for 
the believers in the community. 

We cannot afford to neglect these people, and leave 
them without the protection of the Church, when so 
many radicals, socialists, and other opposing influences 
are at work. The Hungarians come to America ex- 
pecting to become citizens. Failure to make Christian 
Americans out of these ignorant but good Europeans 
may mean disaster; but faithfulness in the task of min- 
istering to them in the gospel will mean loyal and faithful 
citizens of the Republic. 



140 UNFINISHED TASKS 

Work for the Jews. This is the latest undertaking 
of the Executive Committee. For years there has been 
a deepening conviction on the part of many that the 
Presbyterian Church should seek in a definite way the 
conversion of Israel. During the past fifty years one- 
fourth of all the Jews in the world have come to the 
United States. Investigations show that out of a pop- 
ulation of more than 1,750,000 Jews in New York City, 
between eighty and ninety per cent have lost all connec- 
tion with the Synagogue. In this great multitude not 
more than 5,000 have acknowledged Jesus Christ as the 
Messiah, the Saviour of the world. The Home Missions 
Council reports that eighty per cent of the Jews in Amer- 
ica are not actively connected with the churches of their 
own faith, and fully half of this eighty per cent are hos- 
tile to Christianity. 

A leading Jewish Rabbi states: "We Jews have given 
religion to the world, but have little ourselves. We 
gave God to the world, but we have little of God in our 
own hearts. The Jews are not studying their own Bible, 
other people are studying it. Our tremendous indif- 
ference is our worst ailment. We are troubled with 
agnostic atheism, materialism, and Christian Science. J ' 
A prominent Christian Jew, a minister of the Presby- 
terian Church, U. S. A., says: "The Jews in this coun- 
try especially — they number about 3,750,000 — are drift- 
ing rapidly away from the faith of their fathers and are 
either becoming anarchistic socialists, or worse still, 
moral degenerates. Some are hungering for the Truth, 
for something that will enable them to live cleaner lives, 
but there does not seem to be a helping hand to show 
them the true way." 

In response to the instructions of the General As- 



OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 141 

sembly that the Committee consider the advisability of 
opening a mission for the Jews, an invitation was accep- 
ted to unite with the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., in 
the support of a Jewish mission in Baltimore, under the 
joint control of the two Assemblies. A suitable build- 
ing has been secured in the midst of a Jewish settlement 
of 45,000. A superintendent with an able corps of 
workers has been engaged. The w r ork requires great 
patience and tact. It is looked upon by the Jew T s with 
suspicion. The mission employs the ordinary methods 
— literature, reading rooms, Sunday-school, children's 
work, Daily Vacation Bible School. The work has 
passed the experimental stage. The Jews are being 
reached with the gospel, and many have accepted Christ 
and are enduring bitter persecution at the hands of 
their people on account of their faith. 

In the opinion of many the godless, atheistic Jew is 
the most dangerous element in our nation's life. At 
least tw r o and a half millions have broken with the faith 
and traditions that held them, and are without God in 
the world. The ranks of the Bolshevists are being filled 
from this class. It is stated upon reliable authority that 
eighty per cent of the leaders of the Bolshevists, those 
who w^ere responsible for Russia deserting the Allies in 
the great w T ar and who are now in control of Russia's 
affairs, are atheistic Jews who were formerly res'dents 
of the United States and received their training in the 
schools of anarchy and infidelity in this country. From 
Russia, these same Jews, aided by others in America, 
are doing all in their power to blot out of the human 
mind all thought of God. Quoting the exact words of 
Bolshevist pamphlets, widely circulated, it is said: "To 



142 UNFINISHED TASKS 

hell with all churches, all synagogues, all governments. 
We are atheists, we are anarchists. " 

To meet a situation like this, certainly no true Chris- 
tian can do less than his utmost through the support of 
the Church's Home Mission program to bring the reign 
of Jesus Christ in the hearts of American people every- 
where. 

Returning Immigrants. Not all foreigners remain 
in the United States. Many after a time return to their 
country and people. What message shall they carry 
from America? A message of love, faith and hope; or 
shall they, like Trotzky and those that went with him, 
go to disseminate anarchy and a bitter hatred of all re- 
ligions? It is said that four-fifths of all the Chinese 
that have come to America in the past fifty years have 
returned to China. Many of them found Christ in 
America and have gone back Christians. Many have 
gone back in love with our institutions. Is it not a 
striking fact that the great new Republic of China should 
have been born in the province of Canton, the province 
that has given us practically our entire Chinese immi- 
gration? In our Chinese mission in New Orleans dur- 
ing the years of its service hundreds have been brought 
under Christian influences, scores have been reached 
for Christ, and brought into the Church. Many have 
returned to their own land to continue the good work 
there. Italians from the missions in Birmingham, 
New Orleans and Kansas City have carried back to 
their native land the message of evangelical Christianity 
and American democracy. Czecho-Slovaks have gone 
from Prince George County, Virginia, and Hungarians 
have gone from the coal fields of Virginia, and from the 
plantations of Louisiana. The presence of the stranger 



OUR FUTURE CITIZENS 143 

and sojourner presents the greatest missionary oppor- 
tunity that has come to any people in any age. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What is the aim of Home Mission work among non-English- 

speaking peoples? 

2. Would it also apply to all Home Mission work? 

3. What proportion of our population is foreign? 

4. Why is "foreigner" an incorrect appellation for the immigrant 

to-day? 

5. What wonderful opportunity does the public school teacher 

find? 

6. Contrast the old and the new immigration. Which is re- 

garded as the more desirable? 

7. What racial groups have done most for the advancement of 

the world? 

8. What elements make to-day a "day of crisis" for the Church 

and the nation? 

9. Tell where the Home Mission Committee is conducting work 

for foreigners. 

10. Do you know of any considerable group of foreigners in the 

South who are unreached by Home Mission work? Are 
there any in your community? 

11. Describe the service rendered by the Italian Mission at Kansas 

City. To what do you attribute its success? 

12. Why is Jewish evangelization so difficult, and so important? 

13. Show the value to Foreign Missions of evangelizing the for- 

eigners in this country. 

14. What is the most impressive item in this chapter? 



CHAPTER VI. 
OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 



The total number of Mexicans in the United States 
is perhaps conservatively estimated at a million and a 
half. 

They reside chiefly in the Southwest. Their lan- 
guage is Spanish. Many of them can neither speak 
nor read English. 

Their religious and moral conceptions have grown 
out of an environment and traditions quite different 
from our own. 

Ignorance, superstition and prejudice are obstacles 
to be overcome. 

In the Southwest these new arrivals are doing almost 
every conceivable sort of labor. 

They work on the railroads, tend cattle, care for 
sheep, pick oranges and walnuts, work with irrigation, 
do construction work, raise flowers, work in the sugar 
beet fields, produce vegetables, and in fact take an 
important part in practically all of the industries in our 
southwestern States. 

The survey reports for the southwest show that in 
general the living conditions of the Spanish population 
are considerably lower than those of the older Ameri- 
can stock, that their homes are poor, their general 
environment unsanitary, their educational facilities 
scant and often there is no organized religious op- 
portunity of any sort for them. 

It is well-nigh universal testimony of religious 
workers that they are open to the message of the gospel 
when properly approached. 

— American Survey. 



VI. 

OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 

A distance of less than a mile measures trie difference 
between the Church's Foreign and Home Missionary 
labors for the evangelization of our Mexican neighbors. 
For 1,833 miles the two fields overlap, being separated 
by a river and an imaginary line. For one-half of this 
distance the Rio Grande flows between Texas and 
Mexico. From El Paso, Texas, to San Diego, California, 
the boundary through the sand and cactus is marked by 
a barbed wire fence. There is no essential difference 
between the need of the Mexican people residing in 
either country.- Racial characteristics and Romanism 
produce similar results wherever found, and the same 
problems are presented in either case. 

As there are different grades and classes among all 
people, so are there among the Mexicans. There are a 
few prominent in financial and commercial affairs, 
bankers and business men; a few with high culture, who 
have surrounded themselves with the refinements of art, 
the comforts and appointments of the best in modern 
civilization. These are, however, the exceptional and 
there remains the other ninety per cent who have never 
had a chance. These have suffered many things at the 
hands of many physicians. They have been the victims 
of the plundering avariciousness of crooks for four hun- 
dred years. They are in the condition of the man on the 
Jericho road, and there is need for a good Samaritan. 

Who is This People? They are said to be the de- 
scendants of the best civilization of ancient America 



148 UNFINISHED TASKS 

and of the earliest civilization of modern America. The 
Mexicans are an interesting race, needing only to be 
known to be admired for many noble qualities. Pos- 
sessing an amiable and courteous disposition they have 
been characterized as ^ignorant as slaves and more cour- 
teous than kings, poor as Lazarus and more hospitable 
than Croesus." A study of their national history and 
their prolonged struggle for liberty reveals them as a 
people of heroic blood. 

Dr. J. W. Skinner, President of Texas-Mexican In- 
dustrial Institute, Kingsville, Texas, has this to say 
about them: 



"The Mexicans have a history dating back into the 
shadows of the unrecorded and unknown. Three re- 
lated tribes are pre-eminent in the earlier records — the 
Chichimecas, the Toltecas, and the Axtecas or Mexicans. 
The latter were the founders of the City of Mexico in 
about the year 1325. These tribes possessed a care- 
fully wrought out system of government, and a religion 
in which sacrifice was the key-stone. They were expert 
irrigation engineers and skillful agriculturists, peaceful 
and pastoral in their disposition. They attained a pe- 
culiar skill in artistic and decorative lines, and no small 
ability in architecture. 

"From these original tribes, with a slight intermingling 
of alien blood, have descended more than eighty per cent 
of present day Mexicans. This peace-loving, intensely 
religious, artistically-temperamented, unsophisticated 
people were subjugated but never conquered by a band 
of filisbustering Spaniards under Cortez in 1519. The 
domineering foreigners imposed upon this gentle people 
with an iron hand the Spanish language and the Spanish 
form of religion. But the wreckers of the nation reck- 
oned not with the slumbering spirit of a peoplb who for 
centuries had breathed the air of freedom. The bondage 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 149 

of the alien over-lord was broken, but his language and 
his form of religion remained. 

"In some quarters the impression prevails that the 
subjugation of Mexico by Cortez in some mysterious 
metamorphosis changed the people into Spaniards and 
that they are to be thought of as Spanish people. Noth- 
ing could be more erroneous, though he speaks the Span- 
ish language. One of the greatest insults that can be 
offered a Mexican is to be called a Spaniard, or to speak 
of his people as Spanish. He is, and has a right to be 
called a Mexican. They are people of a wonderful 
past, who cling to its memories with great tenacity. In 
some way, perhaps after the methods of the border min- 
strels of Scotland, they have kept alive and transmitted 
to their children, a mingling of facts and fancies from 
a past golden day. Their history holds a wealth of 
romance and realism, of tragedy and comedy, of great 
dreamers and great heroes, of human struggle, suffering 
and victory, rich as their fabled mines of precious ores. 

"The first school on the Western hemisphere was es- 
tablished by followers of Cortez with Mexican pupils 
in 1520 — one hundred years before the pilgrims landed 
at Plymouth Rock. The first printing in America was 
done in Mexico City in 1619, about the date of the found- 
ing of Jamestown, Virginia. Fruit is expected from 
trees of fruit-bearing age. About ten per cent of the 
Mexican people are w r ell educated and cultured, another 
ten per cent has picked up a smattering of primary cul- 
ture, and the remaining eighty per cent have not the 
ability to read or w r rite. It appears that while they 
have been engaged in the herculean task of breaking an 
alien bondage, and its heritage of stagnation, the great 
trade winds of civilization have largely swept them by. 
With a hundred years the start of neighbors who had 
poorer environment, it is natural to ask why national 
progress and development has lagged so far behind. 
Education and Christian culture are a sure test of na- 
tional progress. The Spanish system of education was 
limited to the children of a few selected families, and the 



150 



UNFINISHED TASKS 



Spanish brand of religion withheld the Bible from the 
people, and substituted empty forms for life and power. 
The Spanish theory of education and the Spanish type 
of religion have utterly failed in Mexico." 

All Mexicans Not Foreigners. It is incorrect to 
think of all Mexicans as immigrants. Texas and the 
southwest portion of the United States were originally 
a part of Mexico. When this great territory was an- 
nexed to the United States, the Mexican residents in 
those states became citizens of our country. It is their 
native land. Many never came from Mexico. They 
were here when the Americans came. Instead of being 
foreigners, they look upon Americans as intruders 
and as alien people. In many families the land grants 
are shown which were given by Spanish kings ceding the 
land to them and their heirs. These are the first fami- 
lies of the Southwest. The life and civilization they de- 
veloped in the early days has left its impress on all this 
great region, and is seen in the language, the religion, 
and many of the social customs. 




A MEXICAN HOME 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 151 

Mexican Immigration. It is those who have come 
across the border since the annexation that are classified 
as immigrants. Some authorities say that one-tenth of 
the entire Mexican nation has come to the United States 
in the past twenty years. While there has always been 
an emigration of Mexicans to the United States, it is 
only in recent years that they have come in sufficient 
numbers to attract particular notice. The political 
overturnings that have occurred in such rapid succession 
in that turbulent country have sent thousands across 
the border. Some are political refugees, but the ma- 
jority are simple peons w T ho have found conditions 
intolerable in Mexico, and have come with their fami- 
lies, having been attracted by the superior economic and 
educational opportunity that the United States seemed 
to offer. The World War and the great demand for 
labor in the United States brought many more thous- 
ands. 

In many places in Texas the Mexican has entirely dis- 
placed the Negro in many fields of labor. This state 
is now at the very head in the procession of agricultural 
states, and the one thing that has made the rapid ad- 
vance possible has been the labor supply. They can 
raise cotton, corn, fruits, and vegetables. Mexican cow- 
boys care for thousands of cattle, and the Mexican herd- 
ers tend millions of sheep. The loneliness of these 
occupations has no terror for the Mexican. They work 
on the railroad and in the shops, work with irrigation 
and do construction work, and take part in practically 
all the industries of the western states. The universal 
testimony is that the Mexican is a good, faithful worker, 
always quiet and orderly, superior in every way to the 
Negro. Mr. J. S. Stowell says: 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 153 

"The Mexican who comes across the international 
line to work in the United States does not, however, come 
alone. He brings his wife and family with him. This 
is true Mexican custom, for the Mexican has been accus- 
tomed to take his women folks along to provide food, 
even when he has been serving in the army. It is quite 
different from the customs of immigrants from many 
other countries. Possibly the nearness of Mexico to the 
United States and the ease with which the journey across 
the line can be made have something to do with the mat- 
ter. On a recent visit to an immigration office on the 
border, a card picked at random from the files showed 
that the Mexican whose record it contained had brought 
with him a wife and nine children into the United States. 
This instance is more or less typical, for the Mexican 
families are large. A group of Mexican laborers, there- 
fore, means at once a new Mexican settlement in the 
United States or an old one enlarged, and since an over- 
whelming proportion of the Mexicans who come into 
the country are very poor various social problems are 
more or less inevitable in every Mexican colony. When 
the average Mexican immigrant arrives he brings little 
or nothing with him except the clothes on his back, yet 
what he brings represents his entire earthly posses- 

» » 5fc 

sions. * 



It is estimated that there are 1,750,000 Mexicans in 
the United States. Texas has the largest number of 
any state, w^here there are from a half million to three- 
quarters of a million. They are found not only on the 
border from Brownsville to San Diego, but by the thous- 
ands in Colorado, Oklahoma and other states both East 
and West. The largest Mexican colony in any city is 
in San Antonio, Texas, w r hich has a Mexican population 
of 50,000; and the second largest colony is in El Paso, 



"The Near Side of the Mexican Question." 



154 UNFINISHED TASKS 

Texas, where there are 45,000. Within a margin of 
sixty miles in width, on the Texas side of the Rio Grande 
it is estimated that there are from ten to twenty Mexi- 
cans for every American. Leaving out the larger towns, 
the proportion would perhaps be greater. There are 
many towns where the English language is rarely spoken, 
and w^here the Roman Catholic religion and Spanish 
language and Mexican customs predominate. In the 
city of Laredo, for example, half of the streets are named 
for Mexican heroes, while the avenues are named in 
honor of the Catholic saints. 

Product of Environment. There is practically no 
difference between the Mexicans of the United States 
and of Mexico. To understand the conditions of the 
Mexicans in the United States, it is necessary to under- 
stand the environment out of which they have come. 
They are in Texas just what they were in Mexico. The 
Spanish conquest of Mexico was for the purpose of ex- 
tending the authority of the Catholic Church quite as 
much as to extend the political domination of Spain. 
Up until 1867 Catholicism had no competition from 
Protestant Christianity. 

'Tn the early days the natives were 'converted' to 
Christianity at the rate of thousands per day practi- 
cally at the point of the gun. It was inevitable that this 
acceptance of Christianity could be only a formal mat- 
ter. The Cross was substituted for or became an affix 
to some pagan ceremony. Even today in our Southwest 
the Cross is an ever-present wayside decoration in scores 
of communities where vital Christianity is unknown. 
Heathen rites and Christian ceremonies became merged 
in something which was partly Chriatian in nomencla- 
ture and pagan in spirit and reality. Such wholesale 
extension of formal Christianity could result in nothing 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 155 

else. Christianity became a matter of form and cere- 
mony, and Christianity as a way of life received little 
attention. 

''Religion and morality either became entirely di- 
vorced or religion became a convenient device for mak- 
ing immorality safe and innocuous. The 'Bull of Com- 
position' is said to have permitted the priests to relieve 
persons who stole property from the obligation of mak- 
ing restitution, provided that a certain sum, based on 
the value of the stolen goods, was paid to the priest. It 
was understood, however, that the same person could 
not purchase more than fifty of such licenses in one year. 
As late as 1914 John Wesley Butler writes of Mexico, 
'Indulgences are still sold publicly.' 

"In 1865 Abbe Emanuel Domenech came to Mexico 
as Chaplain of the French troops. Later he was asked 
by the Vatican to make a tour of the country and report 
upon the 'moral and religious conditions of the clergy 
and Church.' The following is quoted by John Wesley 
Butler from Abbe Domenech's report: 'Mexican faith is 
a dead faith. The abuse of external ceremonies, the 
facility of reconciling God, the abuse of internal exer- 
cises of piety, have killed the faith in Mexico 

The idolatrous character of Mexican Catholicism is a 

fact well known to all travelers The mysteries 

of the Middle Ages are utterly outdone by the burlesque 

ceremonies of the Mexicans The Mexican is 

not a Catholic. He is simply a Christian because he 
has been baptized. I speak of the masses and not of 

the numerous exceptions to be found The 

clergy carry their love of the family to that of paternity. 
In my travels in the interior of Mexico, many pastors 
have refused me hospitality in order to prevent my seeing 
their nieces and cousins and their children.' It should 
be remembered that these are the words of a Roman 
Catholic who has endeavored to understand the actual 
situation in Mexico."* 



The Near Side of the Mexican Question." 



156 UNFINISHED TASKS 

Protestant Opportunity. It is from such environ- 
ment that the Mexicans have come. The Catholic 
Church for four hundred years had absolute sway over 
their mental, moral and material welfare, and their 
present condition is the result of ignorance, poverty and 
religious oppression. While they are nominally Roman 
Catholic, many thousands are in revolt against the only 
Church of which they know anything. It is said that 
forty per cent of the Mexican immigrants are lost to the 
Catholic Church. A large number of the men are Free 
Thinkers, and are among the bitterest enemies of Rome. 
Many of the women have broken with their traditional 
faith, and have lapsed into darkness and hopeless infi- 
delity. The only religion they have ever known is a re- 
ligion of rite and ritual, form and ceremony. Their 
Christ is a dead Christ. Their lives have been barren 
of any true fellowship with the living God. Their spir- 
itual hunger and religious needs give the Protestant 
Church a supreme opportunity to teach them of a loving 
heavenly Father, and give them a gospel of love and faith. 
The eagerness with which many of them respond to the 
gospel appeal is one of the most encouraging things in 
our Mexican mission work. 

Providential Beginnings. The beginning of our 
Home Mission work among the Mexicans was clearly the 
Lord's doing, and this undertaking of the Church has 
been marked by many unmistakable evidences of His 
favor. From its inception there seem to have been raised 
up specially prepared leaders just at the time they* were 
particularly needed. Our Mexican mission had its ori- 
gin in an humble Mexican Christian named Jose Maria 
Botello, who had been converted by reading a religious 
tract. He united with the Brownsville Mexican church, 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 157 

which was a part of the work of the Foreign Mission 
Committee, and later was made an elder. In 1883 
Senor Botello removed from Brownsville to San Marcos, 
Texas, in the interior of the State. Through his earnest 
efforts ten Mexicans were converted. They were bap- 
tized and received into the membership of the San Mar- 
cos Presbyterian Church. In 1887 our first Mexican 
Presbyterian Church was organized at San Marcos with 
twenty-six members. On the day that this church was 
organized Rev. W. S. Scott, who was born of Scotch 
parents in Mexico and acquainted with Spanish from 
his infancy, was taken under care of Western Texas 
Presbytery as a candidate for the ministry. In April, 
1892, Mr. Scott was ordained as evangelist to the Mexi- 
cans in Texas, and since that day has given his entire 
time to his chosen people, always pushing forward into 
new fields where no other church is at w T ork. 

In 1892 God sent to the Mexican Mission a timely 
gift in the person of Dr. H. B. Pratt, formerly a mission- 
ary of our Church at Barranquilla, South America, and 
who gave to the Spanish-speaking people w^hat is ac- 
knowledged to be the best translation of the Bible in 
that language. While Dr. Pratt rendered valuable 
assistance as evangelist and pastor, his greatest service 
was in training several young Mexicans for the ministry, 
who were needed for waiting fields and who ever since 
have been great powers for good among their own 
people. In 1899 the missionary force was increased by 
the coming of Rev. and Mrs. R. D. Campbell, who had 
been missionaries to Mexito, and knew the language, 
the people and the problems. In 1907 Rev. and Mrs. 
C. R. Womeldorf, formerly of our Brazil Mission, were 
added to the list of workers. For a time they were 



158 UNFINISHED TASKS 

jointly supported by the Home and Foreign Mission 
Committees, another illustration of the oneness of the 
endeavor of the Church to proclaim liberty to a gospel- 
needy people in whatever country they chance to live. 
In 1912 when the work had progressed to the point 
where a school for Mexican boys was imperatively 
needed, it seemed a part of God's providence that Dr. 
and Mrs. J. W. Skinner were sent to lead this important 
undertaking. From the very beginning of our Mexican 
work until the present time it has been blessed in the 
character of the workers that have come to it in the time 
when their services were especially needed. The Mex- 
ican pastors are without exception men of character and 
devotion. It is doubtful if any mission field of our 
Church is served by more capable and consecrated 
workers. 

Success of the Work. Beginning in 1887 with one 
small church of twenty-six members, there are now 
twenty workers serving twenty-six organized churches 
and twenty-six other preaching points, with a present 
membership of more than two thousand. All the Pro- 
testant Churches thus far have enrolled only about 
10,000 members among the more than 1,750,000 Mexi- 
cans in this country. Our Church, with its small force 
and inadequate equipment, has received one-fifth of the 
total. The statistics do not tell the whole story. During 
the thirty years fully as many as are at present on our 
rolls have been converted in our missions and returned 
to carry the gospel to their own people and contribute 
to the evangelization of their own country. The be- 
ginning of the mission at Linares, Mexico, was due to 
the return of a converted Mexican from Texas. Many 
have moved to other communities in the Southwest 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 159 

and united with other Churches. To quote again from 
Dr. Skinner: 

"It is always 'moving day' with many Mexicans. They 
are constantly seeking a better place. This is largely 
due to their occupations. Few^ are either land or home 
owners. Many are tenant farmers. Some are riders on 
the cattle ranges. Some are wood choppers and land 
clearers. Others are in the railroad construction camps, 
or with the section gangs. Some are in the sulphur 
mines and rice fields; some are in the swampy lumber 
camps; while each summer brings its moving army of 
cotton pickers. The latter often enter the cotton fields 
of the Rio Grande Valley in June and trek northward as 
the cotton opens, closing the cotton picking in Decem- 
ber. And then begins the slow, and seemingly enjoyed, 
return, with a little covered wagon, two or three burros, 
the father and children walking, the mother and babies 
in the wagon. 

"The record of the evangelistic work is such as to cause 
a thrill of justifiable pride. It is a story of heroism, 
sacrifice and achievement. It is little known to the 
Church because of the modesty and self-effacement of 
those engaged in it. They have published a few finan- 
cial and statistical tables but have left untold the story 
of the 'blazed trail,' the weariness and loneliness of the 
way, the dinnerless days, the sleepless nights because 
the dirt was a hard bed and other small annoyances. 
There is the joy of a new company of worshippers gath- 
ered in thirty days and then a heartache the next month 
to find that all had 'folded their tents like the Arab and 
as silently stolen away.' Often there is the after-dis- 
covery that here and there one who had heard, remem- 
bered the message and w r as telling 'the old, old story,' 
to a little group gathered around a camp fire near a 
cotton field, and that another was using the big room in 
the three-room cottage as a meeting house for song and 
prayer. The record of the evangelistic work among 
these migratory people has been a literal fulfilment of 



160 



UNFINISHED TASKS 



the command, 'In the morning sow thy seed and in the 
evening withhold not thy hand, for thou knowest not 
whether shall prosper either this or that, or whether 
they both shall be alike good.' " 

The Annual Camp Meeting. One of the great 
evangelistic agencies in the work for the Mexicans is the 
Camp Meeting. Two of these are held in the Texas field. 
In August just before cotton picking time the members 
and families of the various churches gather for the an- 
nual Camp Meeting, under the trees on the banks of 
some river. The meetings continue for a week with four 
services a day. Surrounding the big tent where the 
services are held there are from fifty to seventy-five 
camps, with two to four families each. The daily aver- 
age attendance is over three hundred, and on Sundays 
as many as a thousand people are at the services. The 
preaching is done by the Mexican pastors and evange- 
lists, frequently assisted by missionaries and well known 




A MEXICAN CAMP MEETING 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 161 

ministers from Mexico. Many are reached who other- 
wise would never hear the gospel. There are often as 
many as fifty conversions. Some of our best members 
have been received at these meetings. It is more than 
a special evangelistic effort. The Camp Meeting is also 
a training school for the Mexican churches. A day is 
given to the Young People, and a day to the Sunday- 
school, and a day to the Woman's Work. The Camp 
Meeting is the annual get-together time for the Mexican 
churches. It accomplishes much in a social way and 
helps create the spirit of brotherhood among the Mexi- 
can Christians. It is the outstanding event of the Mexi- 
can Church year. 

Mexican Christians. The important factor in de- 
termining the success of missionary effort among any 
people is the spiritual results. A striking illustration 
of the earnestness and devotion of the Mexican Chris- 
tians is the fact that nearly every congregation has its 
own house of worship, the people themselves out of their 
poverty giving the means and the labor to make it pos- 
sible. Few^ of us, no matter how poor we may be, know 
poverty as the Mexicans know it. Except the city 
missions, where buildings are necessarily more costly, 
very little assistance has been given by the Assembly's 
Committee to the Mexican congregations for church 
buildings. Eleven churches and two manses in our 
Mexican work have been completed by the sacrifice and 
service of the members themselves. This is a feature 
of our Mexican work that makes it unique in work for 
foreigners. There is nothing like it in the w r ork of any 
other denomination. Services are held every Sabbath 
in every church, and in the absence of pastor or evange- 
list, usually they are conducted by an elder. They 



162 



UNFINISHED TASKS 



regularly have family worship in their homes, and we 
have not a Mexican elder who will not pray in public. 

There are some honored names among our Mexican 
members which show that there is an "aristocracy of 
faith" in this race. In 1895 Margarito Rodriguez united 
with the Presbyterian Church upon profession of faith. 
Five yeafs later he was made an elder. On the day he 
was ordained, his wife and several of his relatives made 
a profession of their faith and united with the Church. 
When the church was built he gave liberally of his means 
and labor. Through all the years from the day he pro- 
fessed his faith he did much by his active labors and ex- 
emplary conduct to develop the work of the Presbyterian 
Church for the Mexicans throughout that part of the 
state. He made frequent trips in his own conveyance at 




A CHRISTIAN MEXICAN FAMILY 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 163 

his own expense to mission churches seventy-five miles 
distant to help in the work and encourage the believers. 
As a result of his exemplary life and earnest labors forty 
of his adult relatives were won to Christ and the Church. 
Not the least achievement of his splendid Christian ca- 
reer was the rearing of his own family. One of his sons 
is an honored minister of our Church, having taken the 
full course in Austin Theological Seminary. Another 
son is a promising student in Austin College. One 
daughter is the wife of an honored Presbyterian minister 
and another daughter is the wife of a deacon. One son 
is an elder, and another son is a deacon in the same 
church. While exceptional in some respects Senor 
Rodriquez is a typical Mexican Presbyterian elder. We 
have many such in our Mexican Presbyterian churches. 
It has been due as much to them as to our ministers 
that our work has made the progress it has. With such 
godly men for officers, with well prepared ministers 
coming from the Seminary at Austin, with loyalty to the 
great doctrines of grace and the blessing of God, what 
may we not expect of our Mexican churches in another 
decade? Is it too much to hope that we will have a 
Texas-Mexican Synod, which will be the pride and joy 
of the whole Church? 

Need for More Aggressive Effort. With all that 
has been done the Protestant Church has not touched 
the fringe of need. Not more than one in one hundred 
is connected with any evangelical Church. The other 
ninety-nine must be reached. There are between 500,- 
000 and 750,000 of these people in Texas. There are 
many in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arkansas, and Louis- 
iana. It is said that there are at least one thousand 
Mexican communities in Texas along the railroads and 



164 UNFINISHED TASKS 

far back on the ranches where there is no Protestant 
work. A Christian woman residing in a village on the 
Mexican border, asking for a church and a minister, 
says that she and her husband are the only Americans 
and Protestants in a community of one hundred and fifty 
Mexican families; there is no school, no church, and no 
religious work being done by any denomination except 
three or four visits per year from an illiterate Mexican 
priest. This village is fifty miles from the nearest rail- 
road and one hundred miles from the nearest church of 
our denomination. The conditions in this community 
can be duplicated in hundreds of places in Texas, and 
are an illustration of the waiting fields calling for min- 
isters and workers that must be supplied. 

Educational Work. In every mission field the evan- 
gelistic work opens the doors and then the call becomes 
insistent for education. The Presbyterian Church has 
always stood for education, as well as for evangelism in 
its work, and the teacher and the school have gone hand 
in hand with the Church and the evangelist. Our first 
educational work for the Mexicans was that done by 
Dr. H. B. Pratt, who secured three young men and took 
them into his own home to train them for the gospel 
ministry. From that beginning can be traced the grow- 
ing need of the Mexican Church for a native leadership, 
and the intense desire of the Mexican people for a Chris- 
tian industrial training for their children that they might 
be better fitted for their place in life. 

Texas-Mexican Industrial Institute. The Church 
has undertaken to meet this need of the Mexican people 
at the Industrial Institute, Kingsville, Texas. Under 
the leadership of Dr. J. W. Skinner this Christian school 
is rapidly coming to a position of great power and influ- 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 



165 



ence among the Mexicans, not only as an evangelistic 
agency, but in preparing Christian leaders and teachers. 
The aim of this school is to give worthy Mexican boys 
a thorough training in industry and agriculture, and 
equip them in mind and heart to teach their own chil- 
dren in the home, in the public school, and enable them 
to preach Christ to their own people. This school is 
located on a great farm of 669 acres, and is conducted 
on the plan of half day work and half day study. It 
was begun in 1912 with fifty students. The plant when 
completed will provide for two hundred boys. The 
farm, the stock raising the dairy, and the shop afford 
opportunity for practical instruction for the students and 




TEACHERS' TRAINING CLASS, AUSTIN, TEXAS 



166 UNFINISHED TASKS 

the product of their labors contributes to the support 
of the school. 

Experience proves Mexican boys to be efficient and 
capable when given a chance. These boys come from 
homes of ignorance and poverty. They are receiving 
the best possible training by competent Christian teach- 
ers. This school has little material equipment for its 
work, but it has a wealth of mind and heart that is price- 
less and measureless. It has teachers who are filled 
with a genuine missionary spirit and who can see the 
possibilities locked up in their pupils, and who are able 
to inspire them to be something and do something worth 
while. Some of the boys having received their start here 
will go to other schools for further training and will be 
fitted to serve their people as teachers, editors, physi- 
cians, ministers, and in other places of leadership and 
responsibility. One of the students of this school won 
the University of Pennsylvania scholarship at Mexico 
City. The University of Mexico City has offered a po- 
sition to another student who spent three years here and 
then graduated at Austin College. This mission school 
took these boys out of their surroundings, gave them a 
start and an ambition to go forward, and put them on 
the way to useful careers. It is impossible to estimate 
the power for good or for evil of one Mexican boy. 

"In 1877, in Central Mexico, there was born a lad of 
Indian blood, Doroteo Arango, whom friendship seems 
to have passed by. Instead his youth was embittered 
by the murder of an official who had outraged his sister. 
He became an outlaw and took the name of Villa. And 
for years he has been a menace not only in Mexico, but 
to the peace of all America as well. In 1806, there was 
born in Southern Mexico another lad of Indian blood, 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 167 

Benito Jaurez. Left an orphan at the age of four, he 
found a friend in a charitable merchant, who fostered 
and educated him. And rich dividends did the mer- 
chant's friendly care return. For Jaurez, after a term 
as Governor of his native State, Oaxaca, left it the most 
prosperous in the country. He led his people in their 
successful struggle against the French and Maximilian. 
Thrice was he elected President of the Republic. And 
even now, almost five decades after his death, he still 
lives in the mind of the Mexican peon as '1 he Great 
Liberator.' I hope that we can turn these lives from 
the path of Villa to the path of Jaurez."* 



Mexican Department, Austin Theological Semi- 
nary. Mexican mission work halts for the lack of min- 
isters to supply the new churches that are organized by 
the evangelists. There has been no provision in our 
Church for training Mexican ministers and missionaries. 
We have had to secure our workers from Mexico or from 
other denominations. In order to meet this urgent need, 
the General Assembly asked the Board of Trustees of 
the Austin Theological Seminary to consider the ad- 
visability of creating a Spanish-speaking Department 
to give special training to our Mexican students for the 
ministry. The Assembly authorized the Executive Com- 
mittee of Home Missions to provide temporarily the 
salary of the professor of this department, and expressed 
the judgment that the support of this important and 
distinctively missionary service of the Seminary by the 
creation of an adequate endowment was a cause worthy 
of the generous benefactions of the Lord's stewards. 
It is the expectation that the boys' school at Kingsville 
will send a number of picked men each year to the Sem- 



*Fred Eastman, " Unfinished Business." 



168 



UNFINISHED TASKS 



inary. The plans for the Mexican Department also 
contemplate training lay workers, both men and women, 
not only for our own work in the Home Field, but for 
the work of our Foreign Mission Committee in Mexico 
and in Cuba. 

School for Mexican Girls. The next great educa- 
tional need is a Christian Industrial School for Girls. 
The girls of our Mexican churches must be given an op- 
portunity for a Christian training. No race can pro- 
gress if the women are left in ignorance. It is a distress- 
ing fact that many of our Mexican Presbyterian girls 
cannot read or write. They are naturally bright and in- 
telligent, but they have not had a chance. The public 
schools do not meet their need. Very few Mexican girls 
reach the high school, and almost none graduate. The 
language is a serious difficulty; their poverty is another; 
and there is the question of race prejudice. While the 
Mexicans are classified as " white," they are generally 
treated as inferiors. The Church is trying to lay the 
foundation of a great Mexican Synod in Texas. The 




REASONS FOR A MEXICAN GIRLS' SCHOOL 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 169 

girls as well as the boys must be included in the Church's 
educational program. 

The failure of the Mexican girls to receive an educa- 
tion is a serious handicap in the Church's work. The 
Mexican Church cannot progress unless both the men 
and the women have the help of a Christian training. 
It is said that in our 2,000 Mexican Presbyterians there 
are not five girls that have a high school education or 
its equivalent. The boys who have had an opportunity 
at the Industrial Institute and at the Theological Sem- 
inary look for their life companions among the girls of 
other Churches who have been able to secure an educa- 
tion in their denominational schools. An industrial 
school for girls is imperatively necessary in our Church's 
work for the Mexicans. From such a school will go a 
stream of Presbyterian girls, trained in the science of 
health, sanitation, and home-making, and to be Chris- 
tian teachers and leaders in their churches and commun- 
ities. Many of them will go into the training school at 
Austin, to become missionaries and wives of our Mexican 
ministers. 

Harmful Propaganda. The very ignorance of the 
Mexicans furnishes a fertile field for agitators and prop- 
agandists of many sorts. The I. W. W. and other rad- 
ical organizations have taken advantage of their break 
w^ith the Church and are at work among them. In- 
flammatory literature against Church and State is being 
distributed in all the important Spanish-speaking cen- 
ters of the Southwest. 

"The literature for this propaganda is not limited to 
tracts, however; many books are used, such as 'Jesus 
Christ Never Existed,' 'Mary Magdalene, the Mistress 
of Jesus,' 'An Imaginary God, the Child of Fear,' and 



T70 UNFINISHED TASKS 

others of like nature. How deeply the seeds of atheism 
and radical socialism have been implanted up to date it is 
difficult to say. The work has gone far enough, however, 
to warrant the undertaking of aggressive steps to coun- 
teract such harmful agitation. It is significant that a 
member of the Mexican national legislature returned, 
after a trip throughout the Southwest among Mexicans, 
to report in Mexico City that 'the United States is be- 
coming I. W. W. and atheistic.' It is also significant 
that in the Bisbee deportation sometime ago one-third 
were Mexicans. The ignorance of Mexicans makes a 
fertile field for the planting of all sorts of corrupting 
ideas, and nothing but a counter-attack along lines of 
education, and the implanting of the Christian princi- 
ples of individual responsibility for and service to the 
group will protect them from this insidious propaganda 
which is continually being spread among them."* 

Another organization that is seeking to take advantage 
of the simplicity and ignorance of the Mexican people 
is the Mormon Church. To quote again Mr. Stowell: 

"In the very center of the Southwest in the Salt River 
Valley of Arizona which has risen almost overnight from 
the wilderness and clothed itself with verdure of remark- 
able beauty and economic value, the Mormons have 
quietly established themselves on thousands of acres 
of the most productive soil. They have reared their 
neat chapels, and now they have projected a Mormon 
temple to cost at least $600,000. This will make the 
Salt Lake River Valley the great Mormon center of the 
Southwest, and from it will go out scores of missionaries 
to work among Mexicans both above and below the 
border. Already many adherents of Mormonism are 
reported in Old Mexico, and a recent report indicates 
thirty-seven Spanish-speaking Mormon missionaries in 
the four States of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Colo- 



*J. S. Stowell, "The Near Side of the Mexican Question." 



OUR MEXICAN NEIGHBORS 171 

rado. It is reported that a considerable number of 
Mexican converts to Mormonism in the United States 
have already been baptized/'* 

International Good-Will. The Mexican work is 
a vast and far-reaching undertaking. It has to do with 
the people of the two nations, and has an important 
bearing upon our relations with the Republic of Mexico. 
International comity must be based upon confidence 
and trust. There cannot be mutual understanding and 
good-will if there is distrust or suspicion. The gospel 
is the agency of brotherhood between the races. The 
missionaries interpret the spirit and heart of America. 
The Mexicans are naturally appreciative and responsive 
to kindness. Hundreds of them will go back to Mexico. 
Every one of them is a potential friend of America, or a 
potential enemy. The Church can make them friends. 
Someone has said that if the money spent by the Gov- 
ernment on the punitive expedition into Mexico in 1916 
had been given to the Church for missions, the Mexican 
border would be as safe as the Canadian border where 
for four thousand miles there cannot be seen a fort, a 
gun or a soldier on either side of the line. The differ- 
ence is Heme Missions, and Home Missions is Chris- 
tianity. Wc can have such a neighbor on the South, 
with all that it means of mutual trade, mutual under- 
standing and mutual good- will, if we will give the gospel 
a free hand. 



"The Near Side of the Mexican Question." 



172 UNFINISHED TASKS 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What is the ancestry of the Mexican? 

2. How many are there in America? 

3. Why can we not class all the Mexicans as foreigners? 

4. Do the religious needs of the Mexicans in the United States 

differ from the Mexicans in Mexico? 

5. Who was the first worker of our Church among the Mexicans? 

6. What other Americans have been and are engaged in the work? 

7. What test determines the success of missionary effort for the 

Mexicans? 

8. What is one interesting feature of the Mexican work? 

9. Do the unoccupied fields constitute a challenge to larger 

effort? 

10. What evil forces are at work among the Mexicans? 

11. Why do the Mexicans in the United States offer Protestantism 

an unusual opportunity? 

12. What effect have missions on international good-will? 

13. What is the most striking or impressive statement in this 

chapter? 



CHAPTER VII. 
THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 



If we were to make an aeroplane survey of the work 
conducted and aided by the Executive Committee of 
Home Missions we would travel more than 10,000 miles 
through seventeen States; 

We would look down upon 612 workers — pastors, 
evangelists, teachers, community workers — preaching 
and teaching in eleven languages in 731 churches, 
schools and missions; 

We would see missions for Americans, Indians, Ne- 
groes, Mountaineers, French, Italians, Bohemians, 
Russians, Hungarians, Cubans, Mexicans, Syrians, 
Hebrews ; 

We would see 15 missions in the various fields, need- 
ing larger and better buildings; 333 congregations 
needing churches and chapels, and 299 Home Mission 
pastors and community workers needing houses in 
which to live; 

We would see millions of people of all classes and con- 
ditions — lumbermen, miners, industrial workers, peo- 
ple on farms and in the cities — who are yet without 
Christ and His Church; 

We would see that the necessities of this Home Mis- 
sion task are as many and varied as the needs of the 
people that go to make up this great nation in which 
we live. 



VII. 

THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 

Home Missions is the work of making and keeping 
America Christian, through the agency of the Church, 
the school, and the home. In it is involved the two-fold 
•duty of converting and of conserving. It is no small 
job, though the Church has been working at it in a 
small way. It must now be undertaken in a large way 
or America will go the way of all nations that have for- 
gotten God and His claims to their obedience and ser- 
vice. In his book, "The Fundamentals of Prosperity," 
Mr. Roger W. Babson says: "Friends, let us Americans 
never kick down the ladder by which we climbed up. 
Let us not forget the foundations upon which all perma- 
nent prosperity is based." The fundamentals of pros- 
perity are not natural resources, but intelligence and 
virtue and faith. 

The Church has built the "ladder" by which the na- 
tion has come to its high position of power and influence 
in the world. Home Missions has made the Church 
what it is. The only w T ay to prevent the triumph of 
evil, and insure the security and permanency of our 
Christian institutions, is through the extension of the 
Church to all parts of the land. 

There are several necessities of the Assembly's Home 
Mission work that must be supplied if this fundamental 
enterprise is to be lifted out of the sphere of comparative 
indifference it now occupies into the place of supreme 
interest it deserves in the thought and prayers of the 
Church. 



176 UNFINISHED TASKS 

1. An Understanding of its Importance. 

(a) To the Nation. Home Missions has for its ob- 
jective a saved America, and all that is implied in the 
Scriptural warrant that the people are most blessed 
whose God is the Lord. The strength of a nation does 
not flow down from the halls where its laws are enacted, 
nor from the courts where its judgments are executed, 
nor from the offices where its business is done; it flows 
up from the homes and the firesides of the people. A 
nation's glory is not measured by its worldly resources 
but by the higher qualities of mind and heart. 

"I am saddened when I see our success as a nation 
measured by the number of acres under tillage, or of 
bushels of wheat exported, for the real value of a country 
must be weighed in scales more delicate than the bal- 
ance of trade. The gardens of Sicily are empty now, 
but the bees from all climes still fetch honey from the 
tiny garden plot of Theocritus. On the map of the 
world you may cover Judea with your thumb, Athens 
with your finger tip, and neither of them figures in the 
prices current, but they still live in the thought and ac- 
tion of every civilized man. Did not Dante cover with 
his hood all that was in Italy six hundred years ago. 
And if we go back a century, where was Germany unless 
in Weimar? Material success is good, but only as the 
necessary preliminary of better things. The measure 
of a nation's true success is the amount it has contrib- 
uted to the thought, the moral energy, the intellectual 
happiness, and the spiritual hope and consolation of 
mankind."* 

It is everywhere manifest that the communities that 
were occupied by the Church in the beginning of their 



* James Russell Lowell. 



THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 177 

settlement, are the communities that are the sources 
of the nation's greatest strength today. The failure of 
the Church to follow the people into new territo-y, leav- 
ing the scattered communities without adequate relig- 
ious advantages, accounts for some of the Church and 
national problems that now confront the Christian forces 
of this country. Students of American religious condi- 
tions affirm that the failure of the evangelical churches 
to enter Northern California in force and with adequate 
organization in the early days when the life of that new 
country was taking form, is responsible for the slow 
growth of Christian idealism there during the years 
since. If Home Missionaries had been sent in adequate 
force to the moving populations in the Mississippi Val- 
ley in 1830 when Mormonism was striking root, there 
would probably be no Mormon Church, which today is 
one of the most dangerous and subtle of all the enemies 
threatening our Christian civilization. Home Mission 
agencies, in the poverty of their resources, have not 
always been able to serve the moving multitudes at the 
time the saving influence of the Church was needed 
most. Not being sure the new settlement would be 
permanent, they could not risk the chance of the "field 
moving away," forgetting that the world is the Church's 
field and if the people move from one community they 
will take the Kingdom with them and bless the com- 
munity to which they go. 

"In no part of the service of God is there greater need 
for that faith which is the substance of things hoped for 
and the evidence of things not seen, or greater need for 
that spiritual vision which can see not only the things 
which are but also the things which shall be. Missions 
in America deals not with culminations but with begin- 



178 UNFINISHED TASKS 

nings. Its function is not to sing the triumph song of 
harvest, but to sweat with the labor of the days of plow- 
ing and planting. It must fall into the ground and die, 
to the end that others afterward may reap thirty and 
sixty and an hundred fold. By its very nature Home 
Missions works in the day of small things. Materially, 
it has no beauty that it should be desired. It wears 
no glamor of earthly glory. It has no gala day. It 
hears no world applause. The loneliness of the picket 
line and the poverty of the pioneer are the cross and the 
crown of its daily life. But this is fundamental to the 
progress of the Kingdom. Churches do not spring forth 
full grown by the fiat of the Almighty. It is a Kingdom 
of Life and it comes by the normal operation of the laws 
of life. It is first the grain of mustard, smallest of all 
seeds, but growing until the birds of heaven find a home 
in its branches. It is first the blade and then the ear 
and afterwards the full corn in the ear."* 

(b) To the Church. Marshal Foch has said that no 
battle would ever be won by an army on the defensive. 
It is not enough to hold a line; the Church must push 
forward into new and stronger positions. Home Mis- 
sions is the Church on the offensive, carrying the forces 
of righteousness into those places where danger lurks 
and the need is greatest. It is the chief agency for the 
extension of the Church's borders. It blazes the trail 
into unoccupied territory, organizes new churches that 
become centers of Christian influence, lays the founda- 
tions and develops the resources that support our entire 
denominational activities both in the Home and For- 
eign Fields. 

"The advance of the Kingdom is along the line of the 
weak, struggling, little churches — monuments of the faith 



c Rev. Arthur G. Jones, "Home Missions and the Kingdom." 



THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 179 

and heroism of men and women who believe the prom- 
ises of God — outposts pushed across the line of the 
Usurper's domain — the advance guard of the Kingdom — 
I see it yonder — the little church at the front — plain 
and bare — no artistic beauty — no glory in the eyes of 
the world — but it is Bethel, the House of God, the Gate 
of Heaven. Immortal souls out there where life is hard, 
passing through into the City of God. If so be that the 
gates of the City are pearls, then yonder humble little 
chapel is one of God's jewels, and the keeper of the gate 
not only a shepherd of the scattered sheep of today, but 
a herald at the front proclaiming the coming of the 
King."* 

It is estimated that at least ninety per cent of all the 
Presbyterian churches in the United States had their 
origin in the Home Mission enterprise. If there had 
been no Home Missions there would be lacking from 
our rolls at least 3,000 congregations, including some of 
the strongest and most influential in the whole denom- 
ination. In its Home Mission work, the Presbyterian 
Church stands at the door of almost unmeasured oppor- 
tunity. There are openings in new and growing centers 
for church organizations, which if accepted will mean 
more to our denominational growth the next ten years 
than the past twenty-five years have done. 

(c) To the Man. A nation is a composite of persons. 
To bring men and women to a saving knowledge of Jesus 
Christ is the highest duty of Home Missions. All other 
results and considerations, however desirable and worthy, 
are the by-products of the spiritual regeneration of the 
individual. There are within the bounds of the Assem- 
bly 21,000,000 people outside the Church, and who ac- 
cording to their own profession do not acknowledge 



*Rev. Arthur G. Jones, "Home Missions and the Kingdom." 



180 UNFINISHED TASKS 

Christ's claims to their love and service; 13,000,000 chil- 
dren and youth, the future leaders in every department 
of the nation's life, are outside of all churches and Sun- 
day schools, growing up with no knowledge of God, or 
righteousness, or a judgment to come; 3,000,000 illit- 
erates who can neither read nor write, and who if their 
salvation depended upon their ability to read God's 
word for themselves would be lost. These multitudes 
of unevangelized, uneducated, and unenlightened, em- 
phasize the magnitude and importance of the Home Mis- 
sion enterprise. It involves the welfare of the nation, 
the growth of the Church, and the salvation of the man. 
2. A Knowledge of Its Bigness. The General As- 
sembly has assigned the Home Mission Committee a 
task that includes more and varied interests than any 
agency doing mission work in this country. By the 
direction of the Assembly the Executive Committee has 
been made responsible for th$ following important 
duties: 

1. To occupy fields in the frontier Synods and growing 
centers, where Presbyterian churches ought to be estab- 
lished. 

2. To build houses of worship for newly organized 
churches, mission buildings, manses and missionary 
homes. 

3. To Christianize the millions of foreigners now pour- 
ing into the South — Italians, Bohemians, Hungarians, 
Mexicans, Cubans, Chinese, Syrians, French, Spanish, 
Russians and Hebrews. 

4. To meet our denominational responsibility for the 
Christianization of the nine million Negroes within our 
doors, including the support of Stillman Institute for 
boys, and the Schools for Girls at Tuscaloosa, Alabama. 



THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 181 

5. To maintain mission schools for the religious train- 
ing of the backward children and youth in the moun- 
tains, among the Mexicans, Indians, Negroes, Italians, 
and others needing help. 

6. To promote the spirit and message of evangelism 
throughout the Church, and support a corps of compe- 
tent evangelists, including evangelists for the special 
classes — Negroes, Mexicans, Indians, mountain people, 
and prisoners. 

7. To co-operate in the publication of the Missionary 
Survey, with the Assembly's Stewardship Committee 
and the Woman's Auxiliary, and conduct a continuous 
campaign of missionary education in the churches, Sun- 
day-schools and missionary societies, for the purpose of 
creating a deeper interest in the great task of saving 
America. 

8. To co-operate with other Christian denominations 
in the Christianization of a strong home base that the 
evangelization of the world may be speedily accom- 
plished. 

This is the outline of a task which in its variety and 
magnitude some denominations have as many as five 
boards or committees to accomplish. Some Churches 
have: (a) an agency for Home Missions, which is the 
work of extending the denominational borders; (b) an 
agency for Church and Manse Erection, with the single 
duty of providing churches and manses for new congrega- 
tions; (c) an agency for Colored Evangelization, with 
no other responsibility than that of looking after the 
religious and educational needs of the Negro; (d) an 
agency for conducting Mission Schools in the mountains; 
and (e) an evangelistic committee, which has direction 
of all the evangelistic activities of the denomination. 
In the Southern Presbyterian Church these five impor- 



182 UNFINISHED TASKS 

tant and far-reaching responsibilities have been assigned 
to the Assembly's Home Mission Committee. The sup- 
port of this work on its present basis demands approxi- 
mately $750,000 per year. It will require in the near 
future an annual support fund of at least $1,000,000, 
if it is to fully accomplish its task. 

3. A Larger Financial Support. Notwithstanding 
the many additions of responsibility which from time to 
time have been made to the work of the Home Mission 
Committee, there has been no corresponding increase in 
the Committee's financial support. A secretary of an- 
other denomination, appealing to the students in the 
Theological Seminary for service in the Home Field, 
said: "I bring you, young men, a three-fold promise. 
The Board of Home Missions will guarantee each of you 
a living salary if you will devote yourself faithfully to its 
service; the Board of Church Erection will guarantee 
you a place in which to gather your people for worship; 
the Woman's Board will furnish you a parsonage." 

The secretary's three-fold promise to the young men 
of the United Presbyterian Church brings in striking 
contrast the poverty of the provision made for Home 
Missions by our Church, and the unequal burden placed 
upon the Executive Committee compared with the sup- 
port given Home Missions by other denominations. Even 
the wholly inadequate amount assigned this cause in the 
Progressive Program is not received. The discrimina- 
tion against Home Missions begins with the Assembly 
in the small percentage given it in the Benevolent Bud- 
get, perhaps the smallest of any denomination. Many 
Synods, Presbyteries, Sessions, and Auxiliaries con- 
tinue the discrimination by still further reducing even 
the small percentage assigned, and by withholding the 



THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 183 

small amount apportioned Assembly's Home Missions, 
which work is fundamental to the Church's development 
and progress and which underlies the Church's advance 
in every field. 

Because of the failure of the Church to provide suffi- 
cient funds to accomplish its five-fold work, the Home 
Mission Committee cannot guarantee the young men in 
the Seminary and the young women in the Training 
School a living salary if they will volunteer for life ser- 
vice in the Home Field. It cannot guarantee them a 
building in which to gather their people for worship and 
instruction. It cannot guarantee them a comfortable 
home in which to live. It can only make an appeal for 
service, with no positive assurance being given that the 
great Church they are asked to serve will adequately 
support them in their sacrificial undertaking. 

(a) More Money is Needed for Salaries of Workers. 
The Assembly's Committee aids in the support of six 
hundred and twelve missionaries — pastors, evangelists, 
teachers, community workers — not including the wives 
of missionaries unless specifically employed for a defi- 
nite service. The Home Mission pastor's wife is not 
on the pay roll of any committee. It is her privilege to 
serve without pay. These missionaries must have ade- 
quate support. They do not ask for opulence, but they 
have a right to expect that they will be provided with at 
least the necessities of life. They cannot render the 
fullest and freest service if they continually find them- 
selves in financial straits. Many of them are making 
sacrifices that the Church does not understand. Serv- 
ing mission fields and teaching in mission schools, they 
can never expect a large or increasing salary. They are 
representing the Church on the firing line, where the 



184 



UNFINISHED TASKS 



burden is heaviest and the fighting is the hardest. They 
have to deny themselves many comforts, not to speak of 
luxuries. They are not able to buy many books, or 
attend many conferences, or have the privilege of travel. 
They are in these hard fields because there is need and 
opportunity for service. Many could improve their 
situation by accepting work in other and more inviting 
fields, but it would mean deserting a people that needs 
their ministry. The Church owes it to them that their 
support be adequate and regular. The Church cannot 
expect her sons and daughters to volunteer for service 
in the mountains, among the foreigners, the Indians, 
in the cities, in the mining camps and other places of 




MISSION HOUSE 



THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 185 

destitution and need, unless they are given assurance 
that they will be supported in a way that they can render 
their best service and make their life count for the most. 

(b) More Money is Needed for Church and Mission 
Buildings. The workers must have a suitable place in 
which to work. This is the outstanding and imperative 
need of the Assembly's Home Missions. It is almost a 
tragedy to send these brave men and women against 
the conditions they are called to face without proper 
equipment. The Committee has never been able to 
plan its work in a large and adequate way. There have 
been no funds with which to provide the buildings 
needed in the various fields. The workers have been 
obliged in many instances to gather their people for 
teaching and worship in rented halls and borrowed 
buildings wholly unsuited for the purpose. The small, 
and oftentimes unsafe and unsanitary, school buildings 
and churches have been acquired largely at the expense 
of the workers, by the use of contributions that justly 
should have gone to them. 

(c) More Money is Needed for Manses and Missionary 
Homes. Out of their meager salary many Home Mis- 
sion pastors must rent a house. Can a minister and his 
family live decently and pay rent on $1,200 per year? 
Some Home Missionaries receive no more than this. In 
addition to the rent, which they are unable to pay, they 
always face the possibility of having to move. There 
are Home Missionaries living in places — they cannot be 
called homes — that are a disgrace to the great Church 
they are asked to serve. Workers in the mountains, 
among the immigrants, Negroes and Indians, often are 
compelled to live in houses that have not even a sugges- 
tion of convenience or comfort. When these faithful 



186 UNFINISHED TASKS 

men and women give themselves day in and day out 
without stint to their work, they certainly are entitled 
to a home — with all that is implied in the word — where 
they can rest in comfort before going out again. 

Equipment Needs. In considering the Home Mis- 
sion buildings needed it should be remembered that the 
Executive Committee has had only very meager funds 
for building purposes, and in consequence the entire 
Home Mission work of the Church is practically without 
equipment. When the great expansion in the Home 
Mission work became necessary the past few years the 
Committee was unprepared for the advance. Reports 
from the Home Mission Committees of the eighty-eight 
Presbyteries in the General Assembly show that there is 
a present need for churches, manses, schools, chapels, 
dormitories, teachers' homes, community houses, and 
hospitals, totaling $3,301,950. 

A careful survey of the various fields and departments 
of the Assembly's Home Missions, in the mountains, 
among the Indians, immigrants and Negroes, and the 
Home Mission Presbyteries of the weaker Synods for 
churches, manses, schools, dormitories and hospitals, 
reveals needs totaling $1,500,000. This amount was 
approved by the General Assembly and was included in 
the budget of the Assembly's proposed Equipment Cam- 
paign. We are living in a new day. The Home Mis- 
sion provision of former years will not meet present de- 
mands. No Church was ever served by a more devoted 
or capable body of workers, and no workers were so in- 
adequately equipped and supported in their task. The 
call is not so much for an advance, but for the Church to 
come up to the support of the army that is already in 
the field contending against almost overwhelming odds. 



THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 187 

4. A Greater Appreciation of the Worker. The 

Home missionary is doing the work of a patriot just as 
truly as the man who wears the nation's uniform. He 
is laboring at the fountain head of the nation's moral 
resources, and is striving to make the nation strong by 
making it Christian. 

"When the historian writes the history of national 
progress in the nineteenth century, he will first of all 
take account of the Home Missionary. The march of 
our civilization is to the music of our religion. This 
gave the inspiration. Without that music the pioneer 
had not marched to such victory." 

In no nation where the gospel has gone has the mis- 
sionary of the Cross accomplished so much. It is be- 
cause of a century and a half of Home Mission labor and 
Home Mission sacrifice that America is the hope of the 
world today. It is because the Home Missionary has 
been willing to serve and suffer for the maintenance of 
the Christian faith and Christian ideals that America 
stands as a beacon light to the nations that are groping 
their way through the darkness to higher and better 
things. It is not too much to say that all the armies and 
navies and congresses and courts which an enlightened 
civilization has devised for the protection and govern- 
ment of the people have not influenced the life of the 
nation as profoundly as these humble soldiers of the 
Cross, who battled in lowliness and poverty and ob- 
scurity, and many of whom at the end of their service 
did not have enough of this world's goods to erect for 
themselves a lowly stone in the graveyard. But through 
faith they subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, 
and out of their heroic labors there are in this land thous- 



188 UNFINISHED TASKS 

ands of congregations of God's people singing the songs 
of the heaven bound and who rejoice in the work that 
God through their fathers wrought. 

"The story of Christian enterprise and Christian con- 
quest in the United States has never been written, ex- 
cept in the most meager and fragmentary form. When 
American church records of the last hundred and fifty 
years have been faithfully consulted and the facts prop- 
erly set forth they will furnish a narrative of devotion 
and heroism unsurpassed. In the spirit of self-sacrifice 
and in the record of actual accomplishment, the Ameri- 
can Home Missionary holds a place second to no am- 
bassador of the gospel in any part of the world. In the 
face of difficulties he has done his work well. In the 
midst of all sorts and conditions of men, under the most 
adverse circumstances, with heart-breaking discourage- 
ments, and often on a starvation salary, he has wrought 
like a hero and his labor has not been in vain. The 
thousands of churches and the majority of educational 
institutions between the Mississippi and the Pacific are 
the fruits of Home Missionary work. They constitute 
the power that makes for righteousness in that great 
empire. He has gone forth quietly, with no ostentation. 
He has ever been a patient, uncomplaining hero. Too 
often neglected and undervalued, his work unapprecia- 
ted and forgotten, he has toiled and struggled steadily 
on, winning triumph after triumph, until at the present 
day we are just beginning to awaken to the fact in the 
mighty enterprise of building this nation, he has accom- 
plished the labors of a Hercules."* 

We have hundreds of noble men and women who are 
pouring out their lives in the service of the Church in the 
redemption of their country on the margins and fron- 
tiers where there is no glamor of romance and no stim- 



Rev. W. E. McCullough, D. D., "Christianizing America." 



THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 189 

ulus of applause to support them in their sacrifice. It 
would help these workers in their hard and difficult 
fields if they thought that the Church knew and appre- 
ciated their sacrifices. They are not serving for appre- 
ciation, but appreciation would help them to serve. 

5. More Earnest Prayer. If you would become in- 
terested in the Home Mission cause, pray for it. If you 
would help the Home Mission workers, pray for them. 
Prayer is the power that makes known the will of the 
Master, unlocks the resources of heaven and unites all 
hearts in the bonds of a common service. By prayer 
we can have a share, through Christ and His spirit, with 
every worker in the field. When the Church unitedly 
lifts this great work to God daily in earnest and believ- 
ing prayer, His blessing will be poured out and His 
Kingdom will come to the mountains, in the cities and 
on the plains. 

It is a tremendous task before the Church in the evan- 
gelization of America. When we think of the unoccu- 
pied fields, the unevangelized multitudes, the spiritual 
indifference on the part of many Christians, the perils 
that threaten our national life, the great foes with which 
we have to contend, the social unrest and the industrial 
discontent that are everywhere rife, surely it is evident 
that we are confronted with an undertaking that will 
require unswerving loyalty and devotion to Jesus Christ. 

In the light of this tremendous task, the greatest need 
is not Home Mission information, though information 
is needed; it is not more workers, though workers are 
needed for the waiting fields and the plenteous harvests; 
it is not money, though money is needed; the greatest 
need is the ministry of intercession on the part of God's 
believing people. 



190 UNFINISHED TASKS 

Alongside this great need there is seen the great lack. 
The Church is not praying as it should. Christ's people 
are not praying as they should. There is a temptation 
to depend too much upon organization and movements, 
upon plans and programs, and too little upon God's 
spirit which He has promised to bestow. There is no 
greater service that can be rendered the cause of Home 
Missions than the daily use of the Calendar of Prayer, 
praying by name for the workers and the fields they serve. 
Let there be a revival of prayer for the evangelization of 
America and all else will be supplied. There will be a 
deepening of our interest in the Home Mission cause, 
an out-going of our sympathy for the workers, and the 
giving of our means for their support. When the Church 
begins to pray for the salvation of the lost multitudes 
in America, the redemption of America will begin. 

6. Greater Loyalty to the Church's Home Mission 
Program. The Home Mission work of the Church 
must not be confused with many good and useful non- 
denominational undertakings that are crowding in to 
claim the attention and the resources of Christian peo- 
ple. The Church has a definite responsibility for the 
evangelization of the unsaved multitudes and for the 
religious training and spiritual enlightenment of the 
millions of children and youth that are growing up in 
our own land without religious instruction. This is the 
first great purpose of Home Missions. Other agencies, 
inspired by the Church, are working for a better coun- 
try and a better world. The Church is not in competi- 
tion with any helpful institution. It is not in conflict 
with any organization that is striving to bring about bet- 
ter moral and social conditions. It is the teaching of 
the Church that nothing is foreign to any Christian that 



THE DEMANDS OF THE TASK 191 

concerns his fellowmen. The Church welcomes the 
assistance and co-operation of all agencies that are striv- 
ing to bring in the rule of Christ in the world. But no 
institution can take the place of the Church. "The soul 
of reform is the reform of the soul." 

The Church has its distinctive work in the spiritual 
regeneration of mankind. This is a task that cannot 
be shifted or evaded. It is the reason for the Church's 
existence and it is the source of its power. We owe our 
first allegiance to our Church and its organized work. 
No organization or cause, no matter how worthy, should 
be given the help that is needed by the Church for the 
gospel enterprises for which it is responsible. Our Home 
Mission progress is being hindered for the want of adequate 
funds. Other organizations over which the Church has 
no control are pushing in to claim the help that the Home 
Mission work should have. If the Church is failing in 
her great mission of evangelizing the masses through the 
preaching of the gospel it is because she is not receiving 
the loyal and sympathetic support of every member. 
Our first concern should be for the work for which our 
Church is definitely responsible. 

The Home Mission enterprise represents the combined 
effort of Protestant Christianity to make real in Amer- 
ica's life the ideals and hopes of the nation's founders 
who sought through the establishment of this Christian 
nation to open to the ignorant and oppressed of the world 
an opportunity to come to a knowledge of the Truth. 
This faith has been fittingly expressed in the magnifi- 
cent monument to the honor of the Pilgrim Fathers, 
erected on the rocky summit overlooking the bay where 
the Mayflower first anchored. Bishop Galloway says: 



192 UNFINISHED TASKS 

"That colossal statue is at once a miracle, a parable, 
and a prophecy; a miracle of artistic genius, a parable 
of Christian civilization, and a prophecy of increasing 
national glory. On the corners of the pedestal are four 
figures in a sitting posture, representing Law, Morality, 
Freedom and Education. Standing far above on a 
lofty shaft of granite is a majestic figure, symbolizing 
faith, holding an open Bible in one hand, and with the 
other uplifted pointing far away to the throne of God. 

"What a sublime conception! How true to the facts 
of our heroic history! That open Bible is the Magna 
Charta of America, and that uplifted hand symbolizing 
trust in the God of our fathers is the condition of our 
national stability and continued prosperity.' ' 

It is for the realization of the great purpose of a Chris- 
tian America that the Church is asked to give her means, 
her service and her prayers. No greater cause can en- 
list the love and labor of every true follower of Jesus 
Christ. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Give a comprehensive survey of Assembly's Home Missions. 

2. What measures the real value of a country, and in what do you 

think Americans should feel the most satisfaction? 

3. Contrast the task of the Executive Committee of Home Mis- 

sions with the Home Mission agencies of other denomi- 
nations. 

4. What three factors emphasize the importance of Assembly's 

Home Missions? 

5. Contrast with other denominations the provisions made for 

Home Missions, and show the need for larger support, 

6. What six things does the Home Mission task specifically need? 

7. Do you think the Church deals justly with its Home mission- 

aries in matter of salary, homes and equipment? 

8. What does the Home Mission enterprise represent? 

9. What has most impressed you in this chapter? 



